Imagine trying to consistently shoot a margarine lid from a distance the length of ten power poles away.
Athabasca’s Brian Sztym, member of the 2017 Canadian F-class rifle team, proved he can do that while competing with the top shooters in the world at the 2017 F-class World Championships.
“It’s very challenging, it really is,” he said of F-class shooting, in which marksmen lie down and shoot a five-inch target from 900 metres away. “Because at that range there’s a lot of things you have to take into account – like wind speed, wind direction, rotation of the earth come into play. And you have to calculate that all in your head before you make your shot.”
This was only the second year Canada entered a team in the championships, and Sztym said it was by far the most competitive event he has attended.
With 3506 points the Canadian team took second place in the competition, coming up just five points – the value of one shot – away from the Australian team, who placed first. The event took place in Ottawa from Aug. 8-10 and drew 14 participating countries.
Sztym has shot competitively for four years. Growing up near Rock Mountain House, his father taught him how to shoot as a child. Now, he said, he practices shooting even without a rifle in hand by analyzing the movement of a tree to understand the effects of wind.
“It started out as a hobby and it turned into something that I wanted to see how far I could go with it ... what level we could reach on the world stage,” he said. “It makes me feel really good, to know that I have enough skill to compete with the best in the world, or I’ve learned enough to compete with the best in the world.”
Sztym took first place in provincial last year, but said that this is the competition he is most proud of.
“It was definitely, I’d like to say a once in a lifetime kind of experience,” he said. “But I plan on doing it again.”
