Rio Olympics 2016: All you need to know about the Trap event

Manavjit Singh Sandhu
Manavjit in action during an earlier event

After the 10 metre air rifle and 10 metre pistol events, the third shooting sport which will be fought out by the men and women at the Rio Olympics 2016 would be the trap event.

Indian eyes will be on the two men batting it out, hopefully, for a medal in the event. Kynan Chenai and Manavjit Singh Sandhu. Most hopes will be resting on Sandhu, who is a Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Awardee and is a 5-time Commonwealth Games medallist.

This would also be his third Olympics and hopefully, he can break his duck in the biggest sporting event in the world.

Also read: Hyderbad's Kynan Chenai could end India's 12-year Olympic shotgun medal drought

The trap event is quite different to the rifle and pistol events and we have you covered with all the details from the competition.

What is the trap event?

The trap event sees an individual hit clay targets using a shot gun. The targets are thrown from a trap located under them as they shoot from five different positions. The contestant must move from one station to the next after the athlete ahead of them has finished taking their shot.

The gun used for this event is a 12 gauge shotgun with a single trigger. The barrels of the gun should be placed above each other.

Rules

The event is split into three stages which are the qualification round, semi-final round and medal matches. In the qualifying round, there is a bit of a difference to how the men and women play out the event.

The men have 125 targets to hit, which are divided into five rounds of 25 targets. The women have to shoot 75 targets, which are divided into three rounds of 25 targets.

The athletes must move from Station 1 to Station 5 and have five targets to hit at every station. During this stage, each athlete has two shots per target, unless it is a shoot-off to decide between two competitors with the same score, then they only get one shot per target.

Semi-final stage

The top six scoring shooters then proceed to the semi-final stage where they must shoot 15 targets which are split up into sets of three targets from each of the five stations mentioned earlier.

The same rules for the competitors apply when it comes to hitting the target as in the qualifying segment but shooters only get one shot per target, irrespective of it being part of their original 15 targets or as part of the shootout.

Final

The top two shooters from the semi-final round play out the gold medal match while the third and fourth placed shooters from the semi-final round play out the bronze medal match. Here too the finalists have to shoot 15 targets but only from three stations, rather than the five.

The finalists get just one shot per target in this segment of the trap event as well and the shooter with the highest number of hits wins.

Indians at the event:

Men: Kynan Chenai, Manavjit Singh Sandhu

Women: None

London 2012 result:

Men

Gold: Giovanni Cernogoraz (Croatia)

Silver: Massimo Fabbrizi (Italy)

Bronze: Fehaid Aldeehani (Kuwait)

Women

Gold: Satu Makela-Nummela (Finland)

Silver: Zuzana Stefecekova (Slovakia)

Bronze: Cory Cogdell (USA)

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