Lajos Pálinkás

Lajos Pálinkás

Personal information
Full name	Lajos Pálinkás
Nationality	Hungary
Born	21 May 1964 Zirc, Veszprém, Hungary
Height	1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Weight	90 kg (198 lb)
Sport
Sport	Shooting
Event(s)	10 m air pistol (AP60) 25 m rapid fire pistol (RFP)
Club	Zámolyi Lövész Klub[1]
Coached by	Mihály Tesánszky[1]
Medal record Men's shooting Competitor for  Hungary European Championships 1989 Zagreb RFP

Lajos Pálinkás (born May 21, 1964 in Zirc, Veszprém) is a Hungarian sport shooter.^[2] He has competed for Hungary in pistol shooting at four Olympics (1992 to 2004), and has been close to an Olympic medal in 1996 (finishing seventh in the rapid fire pistol). Outside the Olympic career, Palinkas has produced a career tally of four medals in a major international competition, a total of three (one gold and two bronze) at numerous meets of the ISSF World Cup series and a bronze under the senior category at the 1989 European Championships.^[1]

Career

Having started the sport since the age of thirteen, Pálinkás has been training throughout his shooting career under coach Mihály Tesánszky for the national team at Zámolyi Shooting Range (Hungarian: Zámolyi Lövész Klub) on the outskirts of the nation's capital Budapest.^[3]

Pálinkás competed internationally for Hungary at the age of twenty-five, and simultaneously pocketed his first medal with a bronze in rapid fire shooting at the 1989 European Championships in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Three years later, Pálinkás made his first Hungarian team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, finishing twenty-second in the rapid fire pistol with 579 points.^[4]

On his second Olympic appearance at Atlanta 1996, Pálinkás upgraded from his four-year fresh Olympic feat in Barcelona to successfully grab the eighth and last seed for his first Olympic final in the rapid fire pistol with a qualifying score of 586. Battling against the most experienced shooters in the finale, Pálinkás came up with a steady aim to shoot a substantial 99.9 for a seventh-place finish at 685.9, just five points away from the Olympic medal haul.^[5]

In 1999, Pálinkás reached the peak of his career on the international stage, as he claimed his first individual gold medal at the ISSF World Cup meet in Seoul, South Korea with 692.7 points.^[1] At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Pálinkás extended his Olympic program to two events that he had never done before in his sporting career, competing in both air and rapid fire pistol shooting. In his first event, the 10 m air pistol, held on the first day of the Games, Pálinkás fired a score of 570 points to finish in a distant twenty-ninth place from a field of forty-three shooters.^[6][7] Five days later, on September 21, Pálinkás sought to repeat his Olympic finale bid from Atlanta in the 25 m rapid fire pistol, but fell out of his contention to fourteenth with a qualifying score of 579, dropping five points from the final cutoff.^[8][9]

Three years later, Pálinkás bounced back from a disastrous Olympic feat in Sydney to nail the fourth position, his best career result after fourteen years, at the European Championships in Plzen, Czech Republic with 687.8, just one point short of the bronze medal won by Germany's Klaus-Dieter Schmidt.^[1] Although he failed to medal, Pálinkás secured an Olympic quota place for Hungary on his fourth Games.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Pálinkás decided to drop the air pistol and instead focus on his specialty in the men's 25 m rapid fire pistol. He had registered a minimum qualifying score of 586 to compete as a 40-year-old veteran for his fourth Hungarian team, following a fourth-place finish at the European Championships a year earlier.^[1][10][11] Pálinkás got off to a bristling start with a perfect 100 on his initial try, until he aimed a rapid, four-second shot poorly at the very end of the first stage that saw him stumble down the leaderboard with a relatively low mark. He followed his miserable first day score of 287 with a much improved 290 on the remaining half of the competition, but his tally of 577 points was not enough to put him through to the final, forcing him in a two-way tie with Switzerland's Niki Marty for the twelfth position.^[12]

Olympic results

Event	1992	1996	2000	2004
25 metre rapid fire pistol	22nd 579	4th 586+99.9	14th 579	12th 577
10 metre air pistol	N/A		29th 570	N/A

References

1. "ISSF Profile – Lajos Pálinkás". ISSF. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
2. "Lajos Pálinkás". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
3. "Szorgalmasan készülnek a sportlövők az Eb-re" [Shooters are diligently preparing for the European Championships] (in Hungarian). Kemma.hu. 27 July 2011. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
4. "Barcelona 1992: Shooting – Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol" (PDF). Barcelona 1992. LA84 Foundation. p. 340. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
5. "Atlanta 1996: Shooting – Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol" (PDF). Atlanta 1996. LA84 Foundation. p. 116. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
6. "Sydney 2000: Shooting – Men's 10m Air Pistol" (PDF). Sydney 2000. LA84 Foundation. pp. 59–61. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
7. "Nancy Johnson wins first gold of Sydney Games". Canoe.ca. 16 September 2000. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
8. "Sydney 2000: Shooting – Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol" (PDF). Sydney 2000. LA84 Foundation. pp. 65–67. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
9. "Gerebics: ötödik hely a döntõ legfiatalabbjaként" [Gerebics: Fifth place for the youngest shooter] (in Hungarian). Kataca.hu. 20 September 2000. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
10. "Shooting 2004 Olympic Qualification" (PDF). Majority Sports. p. 10. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
11. "A magyar sportlövő csapat" [The Hungarian shooting team] (in Hungarian). Delmagyar.hu. 1 July 2004. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
12. "Shooting: Men's 25m Rapid Fire Pistol Prelims". Athens 2004. BBC Sport. 15 August 2004. Retrieved 31 January 2013.

External links

• Lajos Pálinkás at the International Shooting Sport Federation