“I started shooting when I was 10 years old because all my friends were at the shooting range. At first I just wanted to spend time with my friends, but after some time I started to hit the targets really well. That’s when I understood that shooting was the sport for me. My favourite discipline to shoot is 3×20 standard 300 meters. I practice 14 hours a week.
I think I handle my competition nerves in a good way. I try to reenact situations where I get nervous. Imagine that you are standing at the shooting range in a big competition and you are really nervous. The only thing you want to do is throw away the weapon and run back home and cry. Instead you get it together and complete the competition in a good way. That good feeling makes me go back to training every day because I want to feel it one more time. My best competition memory is that of the Military World Championship in Qatar 2016. I won two gold medals and a bronze medal.
My biggest challenge is to live up to my own expectations. It is also a big challenge to get enough time to train when you have a full-time job. I work on my mental focus every single day. I have some exercises that I use a lot: Sometimes I visualize parts of a competition. But most of the time I focus only on one specific thing, for example the trigger. If you try to think about only the trigger for 15 minutes, you will find that suddenly you are thinking about something else. My exercise is to think about the trigger for as long as possible without loosing focus.
I am a sports nut. I watch all kinds of sports, but I think football, biathlon, handball, swimming, ice-hockey, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, chess and boxing are my faves.
My future plans in shooting include hoping to to participate in the Military World Championship in Zurich in 2018 and in the World Championships in Changwon in the 300m standard rifle. My goal is to win individual medals.”
