LEONGATHA’S Aislin Jones, who trains regularly at Korumburra Gun Club, took out the 2024 ACTA ISSF National Women’s Skeet Championship at Brisbane Gun Club on Thursday.
She previously secured the Olympic Quota in Women’s Skeet for Australia by winning the ISSF Oceania Regional Championship in late 2023.
Thursday’s competition was the second of a six-event series that will determine who represents the green and gold at the Paris Olympics, with a single place up for grabs.
The purpose-built 2024 shooting venue at Chateaureax, south of Paris, will see the skeet athletes compete in the individual event over two days.
With Australia having also secured a men’s skeet quota, the nation will be one of the few eligible to contest the mixed teams event.
Jones is now halfway through the domestic selection series and is set to compete in Sydney in February and Melbourne the following month.
The top three in each women’s and men’s discipline will then be selected to attend the final ISSF Olympic qualification event in Doha, Qatar, and the ISSF World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan.
In Brisbane, Jones’ win occurred in the second of back-to-back events.
She placed fourth in the first event, having made her way into the final in the appalling weather conditions that prevailed during qualifying.
Jones is looking forward to the upcoming competitions, confident she has given herself every chance of earning a spot in Paris.
“I just have to trust myself and the process and all the preparation I’ve done,” she declared.
Her father and coach Dave elaborated on what Aislin meant when she described the qualifying process as “a marathon, not a sprint”.
“It’s a bit like racing at Bathurst. You go in, hopefully, with a car that’s a second or two a lap faster and over 160 laps you build a solid lead,” Dave said.
While Western Australia’s Laura Coles secured the number 1 bib going into the National Women’s Skeet Championship final after finishing qualifying tied with Jones, the latter delivered a masterful display of accuracy in the six-woman final.
Jones hit pair after pair of targets, including a first elimination pass of 20/20.
Coles was ultimately eliminated in fourth place, with 29/40, enabling Jones to make valuable gains in the overall selection series.
Victoria’s Brittany Melbourne claimed the bronze medal spot with 38/50, while Jones battled it out with Kiwi Chloe Tipple to determine gold and silver.
Jones went on to record a new Australian women’s finals record, finishing with 58/60 as she saw off Tipple’s challenge.
The display left Jones just a target shy of the current women’s world record for an ISSF Skeet Final.
Jones has now won seven National Championships since her 2015 ISSF National debut.
She enters next month’s Sydney event just two points adrift of Coles.
Jones, who studies Commerce at Deakin University and works from home for a Bairnsdale window company, is on a fundraising mission to enable her to cover the costs of travel, training and time off work over the next six months.
She is hoping fundraising efforts will generate half of the estimated $50,000 to $60,000 cost for that period, with family and personal support to cover the remainder.
Jones invites people to join her support team by making tax deductible donations of any size to the Australian Sports Foundation’s fundraiser at tinyurl.com/AislinParis2024 with proceeds to go directly to her campaign.