AFTER a strong performance at the ISSF Olympic Qualifying Championship in Doha a fortnight ago, Leongatha’s young gun Aislin Jones has put in an outstanding performance at the ISSF World Cup in Baku (Azerbaijan) securing her nomination to the Australian Olympic team for Paris 2024 and bringing home a medal in Mixed Skeet Teams.
Once the team is officially announced in June by the AOC it is expected that Aislin will join Leongatha High Jumper Eleanor Patterson in Paris after she was named in the athletics team several weeks ago. The pair both competed at their first Olympics on the same team in Rio in 2016.
The Doha and Baku events concluded the Shooting Australia selection series which will be used to choose the athlete nominated to the Australian Olympic Committee to represent the country in Paris in just a few months’ time.
Aislin’s World Cup score of 117/125 set a new international personal best and resulted in an eighth place finish overall. Once added to the preceding five events of the series it cemented her place at the top of the Shooting Australia selection rankings for Olympic nomination. Finishing 25 targets clear of number two ranked Laura Coles of Western Australia and 58 points in front of Brittany Melbourne the choice for nomination under the selection policy is crystal clear. The team will not be formally named by the AOC until later in June as selections are subject to normal appeal provisions as set out in the nomination policy.
Jones strong performances have also rocketed her up the ISSF World Ranking List where she now sits at 27th, just under 2017 World Champion Dania Vizzi of the USA.
The weather for competition for both individual and teams was kinder than the wild weather they experienced in pre-event training. The individual event was held over Wednesday and Thursday last week and saw 41 of the best women from around the globe shoot at 75 and 50 targets over the two consecutive days. Many competitors already know they are selected for Paris 2024 and are in serious preparation mode chasing the pressure of high standard international competition.
Shot in rounds of 25 targets at a time a strong performance on day one of 70/75 (22, 24, 24) saw Jones sitting in 11th place by Wednesday night, but more importantly possibly to the young Gippslander, 20 targets ahead of Coles on the Australian selection rankings.
A strong day two performance added 47 more targets (23, 24) securing eighth overall, just two targets short of the five athletes tied on 119 who entered a sudden death shoot off for the last four places in the six-woman final. At the conclusion of the final the individual event was won by Aislin’s friend Austen Smith from Team USA. The two have been shooting events together since they commenced international competition as juniors, both making the final at the 2017 World Championships in Moscow. This event the pair shot in the same randomly drawn squad during competition.
As fate or hard work would have it, they would soon meet again for a team’s final.
In addition to the Women’s Skeet individual event on August 3-4, the Paris Olympics also include a mixed gender event in ISSF Skeet in 2024 for the first time. Australia holding a mens entry quota also will mean that should she be named to go she will compete in not one but two events in Paris. Joshua Bell of Sydney took out the mens selection series and is the only one that Shooting Australia can nominate after the conclusion of men’s selections. The only countries that can compete in the mixed teams event in Paris will be countries that have an individual entry in both men’s and women’s events, of which Australia will be one of ten at this stage. Aislin and Josh will train together as much as possible in coming months to prepare for that eventuality.
On Friday in Baku, Jones and Bell teamed up for the World Cup Mixed Teams event. Aislin’s father and coach Dave Jones gave this appraisal of the main difference.
“Other than only shooting 75 target each for the total of 150 and there only being four finalists, the Mixed Teams event creates a very different psychological environment for athletes. They are used to being responsible for their own destiny. Suddenly their performance also impacts on a team mate and they no longer have complete control over their own result. It adds layer upon layer of pressure and sport psychology. In the teams format, all teams shoot at three rounds of targets totalling 75 each athlete for a combined total out of 150. The top four teams enter a gold/silver final and a bronze medal final.”
With a reasonable start the pair were well placed on the leader board at the conclusion of rounds one & two. As the results rolled in, the leaderboard firmed up and talking to Aislin from home, father Dave was doing the math.
Dave explained, “You can start doing the math by the time the third round is beginning, eliminating other teams that need perfect scores to catch Aislin & Josh. Under the pressure a perfect 50 from a team is unlikely but not impossible. Once we were down to the last few squads it was pretty clear with their final round 49/50, Aislin and Josh would be in a final but it was too soon to tell if it would be the Gold/Silver match or the Bronze/4th match.”
“Austen Smith & Conner Prince (Team USA 1) shot well but they were going to struggle to make the Gold match. Dania Vizzi and Dustan Taylor (Team USA 2) shot extremely well and pushed Aislin & Josh down into the top qualified team for the bronze medal final by just one target. Team USA 2 contested the gold match with Chile’s Francisca Crovetto and Hector Flores.”
Dave said, “Having made friends around the world over the last 10 years it was a really interesting finish. We have friends in all those teams. Aislin has trained in Italy with Team Chile. She had been trying to find Austen to congratulate her on her gold medal the day before and suddenly found her in the same final! It was a cracking field at the finish, amongst those four teams – eight athletes in the two finals I think there’s six who will likely be at Paris. But clearly when it comes to this point, we were cheering for Australia.”
Family back home tuned in to the live stream of the final on ISSF-TV, joined by many friends and club members from Korumburra and Bairnsdale gun clubs. (The final is still available on YouTube on ISSF-TV.)
Dave watched tensely as the 48-target final unfolded.
“Our kids and Conner and Austen went target for target for the first half of the final. It was neck and neck. Then Team USA stole the lead by a target. All they could do was keep hitting targets to keep the gap as small as possible. Then not long after Conner dropped both targets in a pair and it was back to being anyone’s. When Josh dropped one target on the last station, I think our heart rate was running redline. It meant Aislin needed all four targets in both pairs as last shooter to take the medal, three would see a sudden death shoot off and two would give the medal to the USA. While we were on the edge of our seats, Aislin looked pretty comfortable, and she never missed. The smile as she stepped off was awesome. That’s her first senior World Cup medal and the timing leading into the next few months is perfect for both her and Josh.”
Speaking to Aislin after the event she said, “It’s a little surreal, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.”
A team dinner followed and on returning to her room she said, “I walked into my room and the flowers and medal were on my bed. It was then I realised, Oh yeah! They’re mine!”
Life will get busy once she returns home to Leongatha this week. She will regularly be on the range at Korumburra Gun Club. She will also train in Melbourne with Lauryn Mark or Bairnsdale with Dave. Those nominated to the AOC for Paris will travel to Lonato in northern Italy for a training camp prior to competing in the ISSF World Cup there in June. They will then return to Italy again in July to train and acclimatise to the time zone and a warm European summer before inserting into the Olympic environment around the purpose built $50 million Chateauroux Shooting Complex, purpose built for shooting sports that will host the events for the 33rd Summer Olympiad.
Both Aislin Jones and Josh Bell are still fund raising to cover expenses and unpaid leave this year and tax deductible donations can be made by searching Australian Sports Foundation and their name on most search engines, or for Aislin’s fundraiser visit tinyurl.com/AislinParis2024.