The hunt for medals is on: Maxi Kloiber and Felix Karpfinger are starting at the European Youth Championship

Created: 2022-02-15Updated: 2022-02-15, 4:31 p.m

The German national team is aiming for a place on the podium with (from left) Felix Karpfinger, Johannes Michl, Maxi Kloiber and Maxi Mayer at the U19 European Championships in South Tyrol.

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Maxi Kloiber and Felix Karpfinger from SC Oberhummel will start at the U19 European Championship in the distance competition.

And they don't just have big plans as a team.

Oberhummel/Klobenstein

– For Maxi Kloiber and Felix Karpfinger, the highlight of the season is on Wednesday: The junior athletes from SC Oberhummel start with the German U19 national team at the European Stock Shooting Championships in the long-distance competition.

As in the previous year, the venue for the 57th European Youth Championship is the Arena Ritten in Klobenstein (South Tyrol).

At least for Felix Karpfinger, the memory of the EM 2021 should trigger an emotional roller coaster.

The 17-year-old won team silver and delivered the second-best distance of the competition with an outstanding shot in the fourth attempt (114.28 meters).

A huge success, with which he had managed to participate in the individual finals of the best six players.

There, however, he experienced a disaster: none of his five attempts were valid at the time.

Constant distances in the qualifying course

In the meantime, however, the 17-year-old from the district of Erding has become mentally much more stable and speculates less on the "Lucky Punch".

Karpfinger demonstrated this at the qualifying course for the European Championships three weeks ago: he shot his stick in the three rounds with a total of 20 attempts quite consistently at or over 100 meters and qualified as the third best for the European Championship team.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

His SCO team colleague Maxi Kloiber (18) was even one place better thanks to the bonus points he had previously won at the Max Aicher Cup and is also in Renon.

As the best of the course, Johannes Michl from SV Pocking leads the DESV U19 team.

The fourth shooter in the league is Maxi Mayer (SV Ostermünchen), who prevailed against Nico Herr (Friedrichshaller SV) and Christian Mayerhofer (TSV Taufkirchen).

German quartet dreams of team gold

The German long-range team is considered a medal candidate at the European Championships and, after silver in 2021, would like to be one place up this time.

Last year, the Austrian U19 team, led by an outstanding Peter Neubauer, won the title.

Neubauer is not there this year.

Andreas Knaus and Marcel Progsch, who lost to their teammate Sebastian Sommerer in the U19 Austria Cup, are left from the gold quartet.

The fourth man in the team is Andre Hofmarcher.

In addition to the German team, the Italians could also pose a threat to the favorites from Austria.

The six athletes with the best individual results in Wednesday's team competition then qualify for Friday's individual finals.

Of course, the two Oberhummel shooters also want to fight for precious metal there.

Joseph Fuchs

More current news from the district of Freising can be found here.