The men's 300 m rifle three positions was a

shooting sports Shooting sports is a group of competitive sport, competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airgun ...

event held as part of the

Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics With the competitions in shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, the Olympic shooting program began its expansion. Three new events were added: 100 metre running deer, 50 metre rifle three positions and trap. In total there were seven e ...

programme. It was the sixth appearance of the event at an

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

. The competition was held on 27 July 1952, with 32 shooters from 18 nations competing. Each nation was limited to two shooters.Official Report, p. 454. The event was won by Anatoli Bogdanov with

Lev Vainshtein Lev Matveyevich Vainshtein (also "Vaynshteyn" and "Lew Weinstein"; 12 March 1916 – 25 December 2004) was a Soviet world champion and Olympic bronze medalist in shooting. Early life Weinstein was born into a Jewish family from Yekaterinbur ...

in third, as the Soviet Union took both gold and bronze in its debut. Between the Soviets was

Robert Bürchler Robert Bürchler (28 May 1915 – 23 April 1993) was a Swiss sport shooter. He won a silver medal in Men's 300 m Rifle, 3 positions at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, behind Anatoli Ivanovich Bogdanov and ahead of Lev Vainshtein Lev ...

of Switzerland, earning silver.

Background

This was the sixth appearance of the men's 300 metre three-positions rifle event, which was held 11 times between 1900 and 1972.The event was open to women in 1968 and 1972. Three of the top 10 shooters from 1948 returned: silver medalist

Pauli Janhonen Pauli Janhonen (20 October 1914 – 30 November 2007) was a Finnish sport shooter. He was born in Jyväskylä. He won a silver medal in 300 metre rifle three positions at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. He also competed at the 1952 Summer ...

of Finland, eighth-place finisher Holger Erbén of Sweden, and tenth-place finisher Emmett Swanson of the United States.

August Hollenstein August Hollenstein (28 March 1920 – 31 October 2003) was a Swiss sports shooter. He competed at the 1952 Summer Olympics, 1960 Summer Olympics The 1960 Summer Olympics ( it, Giochi Olimpici estivi del 1960), officially known as the Game ...

of Switzerland was the 1952 world champion, with his countryman

finishing third. Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Israel, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia each made their debut in the event. Denmark and Norway each made their sixth appearance, the only nations to have competed at every appearance of the event to date; France missed the event for the first time.

Competition format

The competition had each shooter fire 120 shots, 40 shots in each of three positions: prone, kneeling, and standing. Shots were fired in series of 10. The target was 1 metre in diameter, with 10 scoring rings; targets were set at a distance of 300 metres. Thus, the maximum score possible was 1200 points. Any rifle could be used.Official Report, p. 462.

Records

Prior to the competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows. Anatoli Bogdanov broke the Olympic record with 1123 points to win. The second-place finisher,

, equalled the old record. Bürchler set a world record in the kneeling position, with 381 points.

Schedule

All times are

Eastern European Summer Time Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) is one of the names of the UTC+03:00 time zone, which is 3 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used as a summer daylight saving time in some European and Middle Eastern countries, which makes it ...

(

UTC+3 UTC+03:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +03:00. In areas using this time offset, the time is three hours later than the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Following the ISO 8601 standard, a time with this offset would be wri ...

)

Results

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shooting At The 1952 Summer Olympics - Men's 300 Metre Free Rifle, Three Positions Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics Men's 300m 3 positions