In a class of his own

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Last weekend I participated* in the USPSA Area 1 Championship. As expected, Christian Sailer won.

One of the people in my squad, Steve, runs major matches in Montana and does range officer work for other major matches. He told stories of running Christian through stages.

Christian sees the stages differently than other people. He even sees them differently than other Grand Master shooters. When Steve runs Christian on a stage he doesn’t bother to follow him. He asks, “Where are you going to end up?” He then runs to the destination (as soon as it is safe to do so) and meets Christian in time to capture the last shot on the timer.

A specific example given was a stage where there were two targets visible between two barricades. Other Grand Masters would pause and fire the four shots, two per target, then continue on to the next targets. Christian ran by at full speed, “Bang, bang, bang, bang!” This resulted in four A-Zone hits.

As Steve pointed out, Christian is in a class of his own. Here are the results of the top ten people in the match from last weekend and from looking at the Match Points and Match Percentage you can clearly see this:

Place Name Class Div Match Pts Match %
1 Sailer, Christian G O 1460.8107 100.0000 %
2 Michel, Max G CO 1310.4572 89.7075 %
3 Ramberg, Tim G PCC 1275.3206 87.3022 %
4 Williams, Justine G PCC 1243.8811 85.1501 %
5 Conaway, Brennan G O 1229.281 84.1506 %
6 Tan, Loke G O 1228.1294 84.0718 %
7 Liu, Eric G O 1214.7476 83.1557 %
8 Chang, Jun G O 1209.7619 82.8144 %
9 Coley, Shane G L 1209.0808 82.7678 %
10 Steiner, Eric M O 1202.3446 82.3067 %

Notice how the people below him are grouped fairly tightly. There is no one within 10% of Christian.

I had hoped to watch him shoot a stage or two but he was shooting on the exact opposite times I was at the match. Here is the video of most of the stages:

* I came in 41 out of 58 in Limited Division and second out of seven in my age/division category. I had not shot an USPSA match since December of 2019. And with COVID keeping me out of the office I did not have the normal lunchtime access to the range for practice.

In another week or so I will have my private gun range and much better access to range conditions suitable for this type of practice: I’m going to be taking practice much more seriously:

20210811_134541

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9 thoughts on “In a class of his own”

  1. RE: Private gun range…..may I submit an Application for Adoption? I’ll bring my own whiskey and keep my room clean….

    RE: Practice – I suspect “maintaining certain skills” will become very useful, probably sooner than we think.

    • Sorry. I’m working on adopting Christian. I’ll offer to clean his room for him. No alcohol though. I don’t think he is 21 years old yet.

      • Shucks. I’d even pick up my brass.

        Anyway, I’m green with envy. Pics, please, when it’s done.

  2. Hey Joe, I’m interested in your range building, particularly your wall building. We call those type of block “mafia block,” but I don’t know if that’s just a local thing. But yours look way better than I’ve been able to find here. I’m curious about what base you’ve put down for them.

    • The common name is “ecology block”.

      I’ll follow up with base details and pictures later.

  3. If you can smoke Max Michel by that much you are really in the zone.

    Well done Mr. Sailer.

    • Please note that Max was shooting in the Carry Optics Division while Christian was in Open division. But still…

  4. Pingback: Range construction details | The View From North Central Idaho

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