Bundaberg Paralympic shooter Chris Pitt is taking aim at the World Cup in the UAE in March, the first event of its kind for the year.
At the Bundaberg Pistol Club last week, Chris took part in one of his many training sessions in the lead-up to the event on March 10.
“This is the fifth year in a row that the Australian squad have been to UAE, it’s about 170km from Dubai,” he said.
“This is the first World Cup for this year and the start of the build up for Tokyo.”
While the World Cup won’t qualify Chris for the Tokyo Paralympics, he said it was still an important competition to gauge his place among his sporting peers.
“We don’t have a great deal of World Cups in the lead up to the Tokyo Paralympics so I would imagine all of the top shooters will be there,” he said.
“I enjoy World Cups more than domestic competitions,” he said.
“Knowing that you are shooting with 40 people all in the same category and all trying to do the best we can to get to the same places.”
Chris said when it came to his training technique, it was all about focusing on mind over matter.
“My training involves a lot of dry fire holding exercises and I am working on a lot more visualisation to remember the shooting of shooting,” he said.
“The concentration and the focus is absolutely ridiculous with shooting- it is 90% mental and 10% physical.
“If you think of the wrong thing for even a millisecond, that is enough to spoil your next shot and if you are the type of person who gets in your head too much, it can be detrimental to the result.”
Chris said in the lead up to the World Cup he was training for about 2.5 hours, five days a week.
He said the competition would be the first big event before he tries to qualify to the Paralympics.
“Rio was my first Paralympics I had so much fun that I decided I wanted to have a go at Tokyo, so fingers crossed I get there,” he said.
“My journey for Tokyo started back in 2018 with the first qualifying shoots to earn quota places for the country.
“Our next shoot for quota places will be in Peru in Lima at the end of May.”
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