THE CI rifle team were close to producing a world record performance at the ‘Americas Cup’ of long-range rifle shooting in Ottawa. Taking part in the Palma Long-Range World Championships the 16-man CI squad produced an outstanding score at the 700 metres stage.

Fourteen of the team registered highest possible scores of 150, while the remaining two dropped just a point each for 149s.

It would have been a world record team score at the distance but for the fact that the Great Britain team had already set a new world record themselves by not dropping a single point at the range.

Nick Mace, the Guernseyman who was fifth top scorer of the Palma 16, described it as ‘by far and away our best performance yet in the Palma match’.

‘We are still behind the bigger teams but we are definitely catching up. We don’t worry about the likes of Germany, Kenya and the West Indies. We’ve never had this depth before,’ Mace added.

Overall, with its aggregate score over two days of shooting at 700, 800 and 900 metres, the CI team was to occupy seventh place.

Nevertheless, the 700 metres shoot represents a hugely impressive performance, unequalled by any team of Channel Islanders in more than a century of team shooting by both Jersey and Guernsey.

Their 700m score was higher than the scores achieved by the national teams of the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

Nick Branch, the youngest team member and new Guernsey champion, was top scorer for the CI team and his performance at 900m won him a world championship individual silver for the distance.

He scored 147 with five central Xs, two behind the winner on 149.

Mace said it was an unbelievable score by this year’s Elizabeth College vice-captain of shooting.

‘Nick was brilliant.

‘It was an immense effort.’

‘The range in Canada is extremely difficult and very few shooters avoided a complete wipeout at 900m.

‘You had former world champions and Queen’s Prize winners walking off with scores of 130, where he scored 147. It was that easy to make a mess of it,’ said Mace.