The Finnish Military Shooting Team in the CISM World Military Shooting Championship 2009.

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Links:: CISM official webpage On-line result service on Sius-Ascor

Team membership

Pistol shooters: Kai Jahnsson, Petri Ylinen, Marko Räsänen; reserve: Jorma Jäntti
Rifle shooters: Jussi Puustinen, Henri Häkkinen, Kimmo Tulonen; reserve Kari Pennanen
Coaches: Marko Leppä, Matti Viljakainen, Timo Taskinen, Mikko Taussi
Jury member: Harri Marjala


Photos

A joint 50m and 300m range is waiting for a start of the competitions.

The equipment control was quite precise in order to no shooter gains extra help.

The old time sharpshooting in the opening ceremony.


Finland at the good company. Timo Taskinen is in the front of the line and Kimmo Tulonen holding the national flag.


The long day is over. Medals were very close again but teams SUI, SLO and NOR were better this time.
Henri Häkkinen (579), Kimmo Tulonen (574) and Jussi Puustinen (572). The fourth place lost to Norway by inner
tens 51 - 50.
The rifle team managed better the rapid fire and took the silver medals.

Jussi and his prerequisites to world champion: Tanner-rifle, Lapua ammunitions and Kurt Thune shooting gears.



Harri Marjala was one of the jury members in female 50 metre shooting.
One CISM world record was witnnessed when Sonia Pfeilshifter did 593 in 3P.

Diary of the FMST expedition in 44th CISM Shooting Championships

DAY 6 (15.8.2009)

Jussi's shooting was not a very success, but in a team match quite good. Normally a team medal is won on the average result of 561 (last 5 years). His all position were 185 points, so total 555 with one cross shot in prone. Jussi said after shooting that he decided to get the missing ten points by standing (compared to normal performance). It was quite close, but some eights in the target disagreed. And also the first kneeling was not very good. Hovewer, Jussi fighted until end and got pretty good score.

Henri Häkkinen started the rapid fire extremely well to his usual. He scored 197 in prone. After that the finnish coaches were in good mod because Henri promised to shoot well and get Finlnad back to a kandidate for medals. However the standing was not so good as waited. The tiny groupings in both series were just a little out of ten and Henri might miss some 5 - 10 points with that error. The standing result was 181. The kneeling position was quite usual to Henri and he shot 186 and total 564. Afterwards Henri said that he coul not master the right momentum to trigger.

Kimmo Tulonen was our ace. All depended of him. The prone position was quite typical for him 198 points. When changing the position the atmosphere raised a lot in finnish audience. But Kimmo mastered the situation and shot very compared to his level. Standing was 172 and the FMST was only four points behind the silver and 2 from bronze. Everyone knows Kimmo a good shooter in kneeling. What about this time? Henri Häkkinen, like other finns, was trembling near the result board. Everyone was quite tensed. First kneeling series was normal 96 points and FMST reached the otherr nations. Before the last serie we were 2 points behind silver and had a lead to bronze by three points. Seconds were long. when the last serie ended we noticed that we were on the second place. Great. Everyone was happy and the bad luck we had in standard rifle event was gone. Kimmo has reached a world chapion silver medal in his last gut one international event.

The military rapid fire rifle world champion is NOR 170 and the 3rd USA 1679. Finland did 1681.

In the pistol range Petri Ylinen did 572 in the mil rapid fire (12. in his relay). Marko Räsänen shot pretty good 577 and got a visa to tomorrow's individual event. Marko was quite good mooden and promised to do more points then. The third FMST pistol shooter, Kai Jahnsson, shot well and did 581 points.As a team pistol shooters were on the 6th place. The winner was CHN (1739), next TUR (1738) and the third POL 1735.


DAY 5 (14.8.2009)

The day 5 was the day of centre fire final. We got in the individual event Kai Jahnsson and Marko Räsänen. Both the boys seemed to be very relaxed when preparing the match. Yesterday's feelings was vanished and the new day might be generous. Marko Räsänen started very nice and was after three series in TOP 3. But then happened something in his mind and he dropped quite many ranks below. And just when he got him balanced his Benelli pistol started to fire continuosly, luckily it was the 4th and 5th  shots, latter of which he could refire. Thanks to professional jury members it was not convicted to miss hits. Marko scored 284. In the meantime Kai Jahnsson got some problems. His shots were in very tiny groups but unluckily outside the ten ring. But serie after serie he got better results and gained 285 in the precision phase. In the rapid fire phase Marko did fairly good 289 and gained 573 as a total. Kai did good 292 and 577. Somewhere in the backgrounds Petri Ylinen was planning strategies for next day.

In the rifle we got a training day. Jussi and Henri were having a shooting session and Kimmo trained otherwise. That is the short notice for rifle; let's wait saturday.

In the afternoon there was a little patrol in a downtown to meet the local cuisine.

DAY 4 (13.8.2009)

This day was full of hope! And now we know that all the training we have done has been of high quality. Jussi Puustinen became a world champion in standard rifle by result 583 before French Cyrill graff 582 (21x)  and Egyptian Amgad Houssein  582 (20x). Henri Häkkinen was 12. (581, 15x) and Kimmo Tulonen was 25 (574, 20x). Jussi's shooting was good and fast until he started a kneeling position. Prone was 199 and standing 191. He had to do a lot with kneeling, and he even left the shooting place once during the sihting shots. He kept his mental discipline and started kneeling positions until everything was correct. His kneeling was 193 with a niner at the end, but that was enough for gold medal!

At the same time pistol shooters also fullfilled their day in centre fire. The day was not ours. Kai Jahnsson ended with result 577 like Marko Räsänen, and Petri Ylinen, this year Finnish champion, did only 567. Pistol shooters were at the 10th place (1721) in team event. The winner was UKR (1748), silver TUR (1745) and bronze People's republic of Korea, PRK (1739).

In the afternoon the competitors and team officials had a tour to down town Zagreb, which was a very nice experience of this almost twenty year old nation.

Later in the  evening the team had a small party to honour Jussi's championship.

DAY 3 (12.8.2009)

The day began with a swedish glory. Swedish ladies won world championship in prone team match with 5 points before Germany and Danmark. Linda Olofsson (SWE) was the best individual. Nice shooting also by Christina and Anna.

The FMST started its job as well. The first in the line was Kai Jahnsson who shot 288 in centre fire precision. Kai was still relaxed although some 5-shot-series was not so good (2*47). Petri Ylinen was the next shooter - the day was not good to him and he got only 275 points. Only a week old glory was washed away, but as you know, the match is not over until the last shot. Tomorrow, on thursday, we will see what is Petri's true international level. In the 3rd relay Marko Räsänen shot fairly acceptaple 286, but he was not very happy.

On the rifle range there was big problems with the the Sius electronic scoring system. It delayed shootin 80 minutes, because the central information unit did not read all targets. But Sius team could arrange a secondary way to have a full competition day. The first finnish 3P riflerist, Jussi Puustinen, waited calm the relay to start. He shot prone quite well and did 198. Those two nines came in the very beginning, partly because of the change of the wind direction, and partly because of the clouds which made it darker. After Jussi changed the front sight bigger there were lot of inner tens in the target. Ther beginning of Jussi's standing was quite problematic, but he conguered himself and did 184 points. His kneeling was 190 and total 572. The team match has been started. The second rifle shooter was Henri Häkkinen who was not carefully enoudg with the wind and shot 195 points in prone. After raised to standing position Henri and his coach, Matti  Viljakainen, discussed about the shooting and Henri promised to shoot the same by standing. Shooting was clearly difficult but Henri did the best standing result of a day, 193 points. The early kneeling shots was quite problematic with many eights but Henri did finally 191 and total 579. The hard core of the finnish military shooting, Kimmo Tulonen was the last shooter of the team. Kimmo started pretty good in prone by shooting 199 points. Standing position was the issue Kimmo has long awaited and concentrated. Despite of some bad shots in the beginnig Kimmo did acceptable 183 points in a very hot circumstaces. Kimmo's favorite, kneeling was the best of the FMST, 192, and the total 574. The average on FMST was quite good 575 points.

In the mean time on other lanes there were a furious fight going on. Before the 3rd relay Finland was on the third place after SUI (10) and AUT (2). The good Norwegian team was on the 4th place 2 points behind. Although Kimmo shot mighty good, the fate of the FMST was as usually. The fourth place was coming again. However FMST did not get any medals, the game was very tight. The silver medals were lost to AUT by one points, and the bronze medal to NOR by inner tens 51 - 50. One tiny detail is that the last shot by Slovenian team was just inside the ten ring (91 Sius points). But this is sport and all shots are encountered.

Team results: 1. SUI 1738 (48x), 2. SLO 1726 (49x), 3. NOR 1725 (51x), 4. FIN 1725 (50x), 5. AUT 1720 (58x), and 6. DEN 1720 (50x).
Best individuals: Marco Mueller SUI 584, Rene Christiansen DEN 581, Sergei Martinov BLR 581, Amgad Houssien EGY 581, Rajmond Debevec SLO 580, Vebjörn Berg NOR 580, Henri Häkkinen FIN 579.

Tomorrow, thursday, 3P individual match will be shot and all finnish shooters are on the line at 10 o'clock FIN time. Let's hope that the Sius gets the system working properly so that audience all over the world can see the event. When I write this day 3 story the final list for individual relay is not at hand, but it seems that only SUI and FIN, and maby NOR and SLO, are guaranteed to have all three shooters in the business. C U tomorrow.


DAY 2 (11.8.2009)

The day opened rainy and rather cold. At 6.30 the CISM Shooting committee had its meeting to check that all operations are going smoothly. And they were. 

The day was a training day. And an equipment control day. The organising committee had done a marvellous job, naturally because it was almost identical to the Osijek ECH-event a month before. FMST-shooters had all quite good training sessions all. And the team will wait very confidentally the next day: slow match team events! 

The CISM charity operations consisted of three pistol lend ammunition included to the Albanian team by the Germans, and a rifle to Sri Lanka by the Croatians. The Norma ammunition factory was very helpful in this action. Thanks all nations who promoted the CISM motto: “Friendships through sport”.

 After the training there was a technical meeting to decide what to happen during the games. Military way led meeting was all clear and nothing was beyond conscious afterwards.  According to the organizing committee 44 nations are at present making the total number of athletes and team official 506 (398 male, 108 fenale). The first feast was the opening and welcoming party. Good food and good companionship with participating nations. But the coming shooting events was feasible: shooters one after one went to their accommodations to concentrate next day’s challenges. What is the result we will meet tomorrow.

DAY 1 (10.8.2009) 

The travelling of the Finnish Military Shooting Team, which have started at a sunrise, went fairly good. The first flight to Frankfurt and the second one to Zagreb with trustworthy Lufthansa did not make any disappointments. From Frankfurt the FMST was joined by Norwegian, Bahrain and Portugease teams. The crew of the plane took great care of all shooters and other passengers, as well. It was quite opposite when the teams arrived at Zagreb airport at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Custom procedures did take as long as three hours. Fortunately the terminal was well air-conditioned and no one was badly exhausted. The other teams got the same welcome ceremonies. 
The next phase was to take weapons and ammos to shooting ranges, which are quite familiar to many FMST members because Croatians have arranged many international shooting competitions here in Zagreb. Finally, the clock about 18.00 the team arrived to the garrison area and was refreshed by delicious army food. After that the team did all the accommodation works and prepared to next day’s pre-event training. 

In the meantime there was a CISM shooting committee meeting where many pieces of information was delivered to the team. About 21.00 local time (-1h compared to FIN) the team had the official team briefing where the strategies for the week was created. That is to be seen later when the games will start. After the team meeting the team leaders arranged a second meeting concerning year 2010 planning. It might become true so that the main milestones of the next year will be Plzen in April, Thun in August, Nordics in September and WMSC in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in December. Great!

 That was the brief statement of what happened with brave FMST at the very first day in 44^th World Military Shooting Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. Tomorrow we will get many new experiences.

Updated 05.09.2009