LONDON ear, nose and throat surgeon Parag Patel won the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) King’s Prize at the Imperial Meeting, becoming the first shooter to win both the Queen’s Prize and the King’s Prize.
Patel, who previously won the Queen’s Prize in 2017, secured the title after finishing first in the NRA’s three-stage knockout competition, one of Britain’s oldest amateur sporting events.
“I just thought to myself, I’ve just got to make a decision and fire a shot. I couldn’t wait. I didn’t want to wait,” Patel told Telegraph Sport after his winning shot.
The competition was held at the NRA’s Bisley Camp in Surrey, where hundreds of shooters competed during the week.
In the Target Rifle discipline, competitors fire single-shot rifles at targets placed between 300 and 1,000 yards away using iron sights.
Shooters lie on their stomachs and must adjust for changing wind conditions, which can move a bullet several feet at the longest distance.
Patel finished ahead of 750 competitors, including his 18-year-old son Aaron. Among the finalists was 16-year-old Valentina Churchouse, the youngest competitor in the King’s final.
Describing the effect of the wind, she said: “I shot a V-bull [dead centre of the bullseye], made a 3½-minute wind change, and got another V in the same spot.”
The six-week Imperial Meeting features championships across eight shooting disciplines and attracts about 2,000 competitors, with more than one million shots fired during the event, according to Peter Cottrell, the NRA’s head of shooting and training.
The Telegraph Challenge Cup, first presented in 1960, was won this year by retired US Army officer Curtis Bohlman Jnr, who said: “I’ve been congratulated by so many people that it’s starting to get real for me.”
