Ballinger 19th in tough smallbore

Press, 21 July 1976, Page 18

Ballinger 19th in tough smallbore

By RON PALENSKT NZPA staff correspondent Montreal

The Christchurch company director, lan Ballinger, was nine shots off the winner’s score for nineteenth place out of a start list of 78 tn the smallbore rifle prone position competition at the Olympic rifle range, 45km, south of Montreal, yesterday.

Ballinger, aged 50, who was bronze medallist eight years ago at Mexico City, finished with 590 out of a possible 600 tn the 60-shot, 50-metre competition. The event was won by the West German marksman, Karl-Heinz Smiesze'c, who shot 599 — one off the possible score in equalling the world and Olympic records.

Another West German, Ulrich Lind, was second with 597 — Ballinger’s performance for third in Mexico—and a Russian, Gennady Lushchikov, was third with 595. The Russian had been scored only 590 in provisional results.

Ballinger improved by 11 points between the provisional and final count. “I knew the marker was underestimating my scores,” Ballinger said. i Winds which would not have been out of place at the Trentham range made conditions difficult for the shooters and Ballinger blamed his poorest series of six shots — the fourth series — on wind.

He scored only 94 out of 100. The first shot was in the buiiseye for the maximum 10 points, the second

was away to the left, and the third away to the right. “I know I didn’t put them there,” Ballinger said. “I made no alteration after the first shot. It must have been the wind.” Scores in other Olympic shooting events on Monday and yesterday were down because of the winds.

Ballinger, using the same German-made Anschutz rifle he fired in Munich for 46th place, but using British-m; ie

'ammunition, said he was ihappv with his performance and could not have done any better.

■ “I was shooting as well as I could,” he said. “There iwere no nerve problems or anything like that. There was nothing more I could have done.” The shooters in Montreal can only see two wind indicator flags, and Ballinger thought there should have been more. “In New Zealand we have three or four and you get a much better idea of what the wind is doing,” ihe said.

Ballinger took a 10 minute rest half way through the series because his left arm was “asleep.” "The circulation seemed to be cut off and I could hardly use the arm at all,” Ballinger said. The fault for that did not lie with his new $2OO shooting jacket he got as a replacement for the jacket which Air Canada lost on the way to Montreal. Ballinger, a rifle shooter since 1947, was competing in his third Olympic Games, and plans to stay around for his fourth in ?4oscow in 1980 — “that should be a New Zealand record, but Simon Dickie’s got the advantage of age" over me,” Ballinger said.

The two Australians in vesterday’s event finished forty-first and fifty-first. Don Gowland of South Australia, who finished with 584, said the wind had confused bis sight. Gowland’s wife. Yvonne, won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in a similar event in Christchurch in 1974. Don Brook, of New South Wales, was disappointed with his 586. He scored 600 in an Australian competition last year and has scored 600 fifteen times.

; The three-day trapshooting event has developed into a close duel between Übaidesc Baldi, of Italy, and Don Haldeman, ot ithe U.S. At the end of the second day the Italian was one point ahead, with 144 from a possible 150.5. The trap-shooting event I will oe completed today.