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SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. -- (Ammoland.com) - The Florida Open always draws a strong contingent of foreign shooters and this year was no exception as the top five shooters all came from outside the U.S. with Serbia’s Ljubisa Momcilovic walking away with the Production division title.

Momcilovic won six of ten stages and held the lead on all but one stage, the first. His final winning score of 1504.8476 outpaced runner-up Jean-Philippe Drolet of Canada by more than 108 points.

“The Florida Open is one of those matches on the USPSA that always seems to draw top talent from around the world,” explained Michael Voigt, president of the U.S. Practical Shooting Association.

“With this being a World Shoot year where we’ll all gather for international competition later this fall, it’s to be expected that we’d see increased interest in shooting here in the U.S. I with the entire USPSA membership in congratulating Ljubisa on his Production division win.”

Drolet, who won the ninth stage, finished second with a final score of 1396.0116. Taking third was the 2010 defending champion Galo Moreira of Ecuador, more than 60 points behind Drolet with 1335.5015.

Nikolay Onshin of Russia and Vaclau Vindushka of the Czech Republic rounded out the top five finishing fourth and fifth with 1320.4461 and 1295.0319 respectively.

Elsewhere in Production division competition, Svetlana Nikolaeva of Russia won the women’s title with 944.6899. Andres Hrnciarik of the Slovak Republic was the high junior finishing 10th overall with 1185.8397. Among the seniors, Jose Orus of Ecuador took the Senior Production title with 892.6805 while Jean Dartois of Canada topped the super seniors in the match with 652.4351.

The USPSA Florida Open Handgun Championship was held this past weekend at the Universal Shooting Academy in Frostproof, Fla. and drew more than 365 top competition shooters, including competitors from Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Norway, Russia, Serbia, the Slovak Republic and Spain.

The next major match on the USPSA calendar is the 2011 Area 6 Regional Pistol Championship which will be held April 15-17 at the Universal Shooting Academy.

For more information on upcoming matches, or to become a member, visit www.USPSA.org. To join in on the conversation with other competition shooters follow @USPSA_Shooting on Twitter or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/USPracticalShootingAssn.

About:
USPSA is a non-profit membership association. Most of the more than 15,000 individual members belong to and regularly compete at one of the nearly 400 affiliated clubs and sections (groups of clubs banded together for mutual benefit) located across the United States. USPSA is affiliated with the International Practical Shooting Confederation (I.P.S.C.), which is comprised of approximately 67 nations. USPSA is the American region of IPSC. Visit: www.uspsa.org

AT LION´S DEN OF PRACTICAL SHOOTING

The group of practical shooters from the Team CZ Shooting Uherský Brod participated in the last week (on 18th – 20th February) in Orlando, USA under the managerial guidance of Milan Trkulja in prestigious shooting contest dedicated to pistol shooting - Florida Open 2011. Zbrojovka was represented by Ljubiša Momčilovič from Serbia, Andrej Hrnčiarik junior from Slovakia, Martin Kameníček from the Czech Republic and Svetlana Nikolayeva from Russia in Ladies category. This was in fact the first-ever participation of shooters from the Team CZ Shooting at competition held in the territory of the USA.

In addition to the shooters from arms factory of Uherský Brod there were also 3 members of the CZ Alliance Russia Team - Nikolay Ončin, Alexey Ragozin and Alexey Pičugin. From the Czech Republic we had also Václav Vinduška at Production Division and Roman Podlešák at Standard Division.

Although Česká zbrojovka shooters in practice hardly started their preparations for 2011 season, they stand excellently when competing at Florida Frostproof shooting range with 365 shooters from 29 countries. The Production Division has been clearly won by Ljubiša Momčilovič, at junior part of this tournament we seen victorious Andrej Hrnčiarik (at Men’s Category he reached an excellent 10th place). Moreover, 10 shooters from the Top 12 were shooting with the CZ 75 SP-01 Shadow pistols made by Česká zbrojovka, Uherský Brod. The Team CZ Alliance Russia gave us a pleasant surprise when all of them penetrated into top twenty in the overall results of Production Division.

Also Martin Kameniček (left for the USA only after making only one shooting training), he shot an outstanding performance reaching very high grade 6th place thus conquering 8 USA shooters carrying Grand Master title. The difference in the number of points between the second Chris Tilley and the sixth Martin Kameníček was just only 23.5 points, thus making 1.5%.

At the Shoot-Off competition at the Production Division we have seen again as the winner Ljubiša Momčilovič, who at the finals overpowered Russian shooter of the Team CZ Alliance Russia, Nikolay Ončin. At the Open Division finals we have seen break through of the Spanish shooter Jorge Ballesteros and Martin Kameniček from Uherský Brod, who at the end lost these finals narrowly in the rate of 2:1.

This tournament was a superb start of the season, which for the shooters from Uherský Brod culminates in the IPSC World Championship to be held at Rhodes, Greece in October 2011.

For more information please contact the Manager of the Team CZ Shooting:

Milan TRKULJA
E-mail: trkulja@czub.cz