Rio 2016. V. Bubnovich: “In our sport you can hardly feel when you miss 10”

Today Belarusian sniper Vitali Bubnovich was among the leader 8 in 50m Rifle Prone.

One after another the opponents were dropping out when suddenly Vitali also had to leave.

“Vitali, do you feel upset to have left with 9,9 points? What has gone wrong?”

“It’s hard say definitely, may be it’s stress and undue responsibility”. I was close to the podium, but in our sport you can hardly feel when you miss 10. Even Niccolo Campriani, the new Olympic champion in 10m Air Pistol, was missing at the beginning. That is the matter of fortune, every of our top 8 could win”.

“But the strongest are more likely to be lucky. However, gold winner Henri Junghaenel has never been among strongest until today…”

“Sure, he’s never performed brightly, but he is very experienced”.

“How could you evaluate your Olympic performance?”

“With all that trainings and Olympic preparations under the belt, it could be more impressive, especially in 10m Air Pistol, where I was 17^th. What concerns today’s final performance, I think it was dignified. I wish I were among the winners”.

“What’s then?”

“I’ll stay in Rio to root for Illia Charheika and Yuri Shcherbatsevich will perform in 50m Rifle 3 Positions. I hope they will succeed”.

“What about your career? How do you feel in your years?”

“I feel fine. 41 is not that age when you should retire. Warren Potent is almost 55, so that is not critical in our sport. I don’t know whether I will continue. I wouldn’t like to make snap decisions”. 

Text by Uladzimir Zdanovich

Photo by Aliaksandr Semianiaka