Extreme Shot Italia: Winner’s Diaries
The video below shows the fantastic winning string of Tony Zammit and his spotter Oliver Saliba at Extreme Shot Italia IV.
Gary Costello from March Optics then interviews the team after their win. Scroll further down.
Watch the other shooters in this clip below to appreciate the challenges around real world competitive 2000meter shooting.
The most exciting match of 2024 for light Class ELR was successfully completed in Trapani, Sicily, Italy.
With over 70 teams participating from 17 nations around the world, the recipe for international ELR light class matches seems to be taking shape. The shooters love what greets them in Sicily and everyone left wanting more! It was a full week of shooting and meeting people and socializing with like minded shooters. There was a great feeling of camaraderie and many shooters enjoyed learning about new rifle systems as well as experienced shooters. Ultimately, ELR kept us on our toes and revealed some amazing surprises.
ESI 2024 Sponsors
Top industry names were on the range with us too, their CEOs and representatives were there to meet the shooters and learn more about the needs of ELR shooters.
We thank these sponsors whose purchase of Sponsorship program options enabled us to fund this match. This match sees over 35 people come together to mount such a spectacle over a week. The quality of everything used is top notch especially filming and streaming equipment and is run by professionals teams all of which drive commercial costs.
50BMG Shooting in Sicily
Watch Tony run the Voere 50 Cal.
We Shot the VOERE 50 BMG first time round in Sicily. We gave the rifle to the top 3 shooters in the match and ran a few rounds through it at 2000m. Schmidt and Bender crowned each of these Voere rifles with their top of the line High Performance scopes.
Schmidt had a great presence throughout the match with their own booth at the match as Premium Sponsor.
Welcome Dinner ESI 2024
From welcome dinners on the first day to numerous socializing moments with other international shooters, to actual practice days to get their heart beat racing, the beat of this match keeps gaining moment year on year. Shooters spent a whole week and more in Sicily where they experienced ELR 360. They shot trajectory validation targets on the training days to get them somewhat warmed up. Then they plunged into the actual match. An exciting 4 days of shooting where we saw shooters like Tony recuperated amazingly from a near lost match to propelling themselves to the first place above all other teams. Impressive show and we did our best to transmit the emotions of this match via streaming.
Winner’s Prize: Voere Rifle in 6.5cm
Voere Kufstein placed this awesome medium caliber rifle the Victor 3 in 6.5cm on the winner’s podium. Thanks to Danilo Amelotti who helped us secure such a nice gift.
Tony left ecstatic not only to win the match but also the most prized gift till this day.
I had the opportunity to run 10 rounds through it at 1005m on the day after the match with my man Luca Xerri. we put an 8″ group with Hornady factory match ammo on the steel plates. No fancy bags, we just shot it as it came. Take a look at these products from those brands that are sponsoring these matches. They bring you the action straight to your devices. The Schmidt’s had great turrets as well. Have a look at their high performance line up.
Other very nice gifts on the prize table ranged from the Kahles scope range finder to the Kestrel Wind Meter to the Labradar LX by March Scopes, 3000EUR vouchers from Zero Compromise optic as well as mounts and bipods from Armeria Marcore.
2025 ESI Pre-registration
The pre-registration for ESI 2025 already shows over 150 teams subscribed which bodes well for the expansion of the ELR discipline and over 20 nationalities already ticking the boxes for a global ELR match. You may watch some of the moments in pictures from ESI 2024 in this article.
Meet Tony and Oliver Winning Team of Extreme Shot Italia 2024
We caught up with Oliver and Tony to get their views right after their winning string. This is as raw as it gets.
Meet Bill 2023 ESI Winner.
We caught up with Bill to ask him a few questions ahead of the match to see how he was preparing himself for a much bigger match than 2023.
Extreme Shot Italia Match preparation by Bill Tatham
Click play to watch Bill Shoot his string, he managed a recovery after some rifle issues.
I break this down into 3 different areas;
- Equipment
- Practice
- Discussion
Equipment:
In terms of equipment, these days I look at what has worked for me, and what hasn’t necessarily worked as well as it could do and could be improved. I was able to win the 1 mile and the 2000 m competitions in 2023 so top of my 2024 plan, is “change as little as possible”!
I plan to use the same Accuracy International AX Multi -Calibre rifle, with the same 33 XC barrel, the same Schmidt and Bender 6-36 x 50 6 PM II scope, and precisely the same ammunition I loaded last year albeit with a fresh canister of powder. We are all constantly incrementally trying to improve our equipment in ELR and I am as guilty as anyone else of looking at every new fad that is launched, many of which are genuinely helpful, but I am also of the belief that if it works, don’t change it, as you are at risk of simply introducing more opportunity for error.
Of course, if it didn’t work for you then you might want to reconsider your whole rifle platform from scratch, but that’s another conversation.
You either need to be able to consistently spot your own fall of shot or have a good spotter who can consistently do this for you. I’ve already got a good spotting scope with the relevant reticules so that my spotter can simply give me an adjustment to get me onto the centre of the target, but both of us need to spend some time throughout the year practising on it.
ZERO COMPROMISE also one of our sponsors had a stand with some of their best ELR offerings. Many shooters ran ZCO during this match too.
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I do spend quite a lot of time preparing match ammunition for a long-range event like this but as I say I am planning on using exactly the same load as I did last year so I haven’t had to use up precious barrel life or range time this year, to develop or tune the load. However, it psychologically important to be completely confident about your ammunition, so time spent loading and measuring match ammunition is never wasted.
The only equipment I am usually fiddling around with run-up to the last minute is my rear bags and my bipod. Even as I am writing this article , I haven’t quite settled on exactly what I will use but it will probably be a combination again of last year’s rear bag with some new rubber tiles to insert underneath when I need a bit more height. I’ll play around on the practice day with a couple of different bipods to see which I prefer, as I want to see what the firing point surface and mats are like before I make a decision.
I also spend quite a bit of time on refining my dope cards and plans on paper so that if my kestrel fails as it did for one portion of the competition last year, I’ve always got paper tables to fall back on, which is reassuring in the event of equipment failure.
Practice:
Rifle shooting is definitely a perishable skill and I like to get a reasonable amount of practice in over the year but not necessarily with my competition rifle on the actual range where we are shooting. I find that by shooting different rifles on different ranges at different distances over the course of the year , it continues to feed my knowledge bank and make me a better all-round shooter.
I’ve practised once with my competition rifle this year but I don’t want to put too many rounds through my barrel which is already quite well worn and also because I believe that you can overtrain for these types of events and that mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation, once you are confident with your chosen event rifle. However I do like to do dry practice off the range, with my scope, as most mistakes that competitors make under pressure, are related to scope adjustment.
When I am practising I want to try and shoot in different wind conditions as it is wind reading and dope adjustment that will generally have the biggest impact on the day. If you are there with the best possible equipment and ammunition and so is the competitor next to you, then you just have to read the environmental conditions better than they do, to get a higher score.
Gary Costello sponsor from March Scopes Europe joins organiser Rod Formosa at the Commentary booth on day 1.
The commentary booth then moved to open air as the wind slowed down.
Discussion:
This is as much about discussion with myself as well as my spotter and perhaps other competitors I know well. We will want to chat about how we are going to run shooting/spotting as everyone does it quite differently and I don’t believe that there are any right or wrong methods, just different methods that suit different shooters and spotters. My spotter knows that I don’t want to hear very much from him other than the adjustment so we will talk about this in advance in a non-shooting environment so that both of us are comfortable with what we are going to say to each other and how we will react.
We will also talk about our experiences of environmental conditions for that time of year at the range and I will look back through my shooting diaries for the past few years, to remind myself what we might be expecting. Nearer the time of the event, I will spend a bit of time in visualisation, dry shooting all the stages a few times.
If you’ve got the best possible kit and ammunition and the competitor next to you can read environmental conditions just as well as you, then it may well come down to mental discipline. So I want to make sure, that I’m in the right frame of mind in the week before the competition and my mind isn’t cluttered with other issues.
I like events like Extreme Shot Italia where you can meet up with old friends, and chat to other competitors both over a beer, and at the event as this is far more relaxing than spending all of the time worrying about what’s going to happen on the day, so even a bit of socialising is in my opinion good pre-match preparation.
I’m never a great shot in practice sessions, and that doesn’t worry me because I expect to make a few mistakes in practice and use the lessons to work out what I’m going to do on the day. However, on the day, I want to be relaxed and yet completely focused only on the environmental conditions and the event itself, to the exclusion of all else.
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We saw some other really nice strings, notably a good run by Robert Aquila at 1400m seen below using his trusted 300Norma Mag.
Andrew Venables from WMS firearms training did some fine spotting there.
