Olympic dream starts in Larnaca for European Trap and Skeet shooters

The first eight spots in Paris 2024 Shooting will be earned over the coming weeks at the 2022 European Championship (Shotgun) takes place in Larnaca, Cyprus. A modest "hidden gem" on the island nation's south-eastern coast, Larnaca is the country's third largest city, although the Larnaca Olympic Shooting Range is actually in the nearby village of Tersefanou, with a population of about 1300.

Plenty of events will take place, but four of them matter for Paris 2024 qualification: the Men's and Women's Trap and Skeet events. The top two athletes will earn at most one place for their NOC (so the same country cannot snag both quotas). The opening ceremony will take place on Thursday, with Trap qualification on Friday and Saturday before the finals later on Saturday, with the women at 14:30 local time and the men at 16:30. After that, a few non-Olympic events take place but the Skeet Qualification begins on 8 September, before continuing on 9 September. Later on 9 September the finals will take place, again with the women beginning at 14:30 and the men at 16:30. Qualifying one man and one woman in Skeet will also guarantee a place in the Mixed Team event.

In Lonato del Garda in 2019, eventual Olympic champion Czech Republic's Jiří Lipták and Great Britain's Aaron Heading earned a spot in the Men's Trap, with Greece's Nikolas Mavrommatis and Cyprus' Dmitris Konstantinou earning a spot in the Skeet. On the women's side, the ROC's Daria Semianova and San Marino's Alessandra Perilli (who won bronze in Tokyo) earned a spot in the Trap with the Czech Republic's Barbora Šumová and Ukraine's Iryna Mavlochiko earning a spot in the Skeet. However, this time, the European Shotgun championship is top of the pecking order (Shooting quota places have priority based on chronological order) rather than somewhere in the middle.

The European Shotgun Confederation (ESC) has not provided a start list, but noted that "All members of the European Shooting Confederation are invited to participate
without any exception", implying that Russian and Belarusian athletes will be able to compete. Some big names are expected to compete however: in Tokyo 2020, all three men's trap medallists (including champion Lipták), two women's trap medallists and the silver medallists in both skeet events were Europeans, as were the top two in the mixed trap team. An article on the IOC website confirms at least six Olympic medalists will be present: Jesper Hansen (Silver, Men's Trap, Denmark), Matthew Coward Holley (Bronze, Men's Skeet, Great Britain), Fátima Gálvez, Alberto Fernández (both Gold, Mixed Trap, Spain), Gianmarco Berti, and Alessandra Perilli (both Silver, Mixed Trap, San Marino; Perilli also won bronze in the individual trap event). With only two spots up for grabs in Larnaca per event, there will be stiff competition.