On the first weekend in August, the grand finale of the RWS youth cup for small caliber rifles was held at the main shooting range in Innsbruck-Arzl. After three long-distance rounds had been held since May, the best participants in the junior and young shooter classes competed in the finals in the disciplines 60 prone and 3×20 three-position fight to face the competition individually and as a team. In addition to the medals, the main prize was ammunition from the sponsoring company RUAG.
Julia Biechl (SG Absam), Marcel Szentannai (SG Scheffau) and Patrick Entner (SG Breitenbach) started for Tyrol in the young shooters class and in the junior class Helena Messner (SG Absam), Paula Alberts (sport shooters St. Johann), Johannes Kuen (SG Thaur), Kevin Weiler (SG Innervillgraten), Dominic Einwaller (SG Scheffau) and Samuel Isser (SG Absam) demonstrated their skills.
Already on the first day of the competition, the hosting federal state was able to prove its strength: in the 60 prone competition, victory went to Tyrol in both the junior class and the team classification. In the juniors, the East Tyrolean Kevin Weiler won both rounds with results of 626.1 points and 622.8 points ahead of his Tyrolean colleagues Johannes Kuen and Samuel Isser and, together with Kuen and Lisa Hafner, was also able to take first place in the team ranking Secure Vorarlberg 1. With Samuel Isser, Helena Messner and Dominic Einwaller, a Tyrolean team also finished third. Lisa Hafner won the juniors with 613.5 points and 615.5 points ahead of Helena Messner and Jaqueline Burtscher from Vorarlberg.
On the following day, the competitions in the 3×20 three-position fight were carried out, the individual results of which were added up as in the prone competition and used for the final team evaluation. Here, too, Lisa Hafner was able to achieve the best results in both rounds of the juniors: with 583 and 585 points, she took the lead ahead of her competitors Nadja Krainz and Marlene Baumgartner. In the juniors, Kevin Weiler was again unbeatable with a total result of 1,164 points from both rounds, leaving his colleagues Dominic Einwaller (1,136 points) and Johannes Kuen (1,135 points) well behind.
Tirol also excelled as a team and was able to relegate the Vorarlberg trio to second place with 3,467 points (Tirol 1 – Lisa Hafner, Kevin Weiler and Johannes Kuen). Tirol 2 (Julia Biechl, Helena Messner, Patrick Entner) was again able to take third place with 3,367 points.
However, the big winner of this year’s RWS Cup was Kevin Weiler: the East Tyrolean convinced with a consistently strong performance in the final and was therefore able to win as the crowning glory of this year’s RWS Cup with a total of 2,412.9 points and thus the challenge cup ahead of Kiano Waibel (Vorarlberg) and Valerie Tauber (Upper Austria).