Brody Woollard, a 20-year-old junior shot, fought his way to winning the coveted British Open Sporting Championship at EJ Churchill’s Swinton Shooting Ground near Masham in North Yorkshire on Sunday 5 September. It was a thrilling climax to the 2021 clay season.
He beat the top names in the sport to take the title. No-one seemed more surprised than Brody himself. “It’s hard to explain how I feel right now, it’s brilliant,” he says. “I was happy winning juniors. That’s all I was bothered about. Coming away with this is a whole different picture.”
Brody, who turns 21 in October, started clay shooting when he was 9½, and began entering competitions at the age of 11. He qualified for the final on day 2 of the competition, shooting a relatively unremarkable 103 ex-120 on the 15-stand course.
In Sunday morning’s final, Brody really ramped up a gear or two. He went round the 75-target course straighting stand after stand, only missing on the final stand where he dropped three to finish ahead of the field on 72 ex-75.
Brody went into the super-final one point ahead of current world champion Mark Winser, as well as Browning shooter Sam Green, Phil Gray, Sam Usher and James Attwood. That lead could have slipped away in an instant against a seasoned shot like Mark. But Brody fought off the nerves and kept smashing the targets, holding his lead through to the very end.
Brody comments: “I’ve been working towards this for a long time, but I thought it would take a lot more years than this. I’ve shot the British Open for years and never done any good. I’ve always shot well in the qualifiers and then let myself down on the final day. Today it’s all just come together finally.”
Click here for the full results on the CPSA website.
