Ragnar Skanåker

Karl Ragnar Skanåker (born June 8, 1934 in Stora Skedvi , Säter municipality ) is a Swedish sports shooter .

biography

Ragnar Skanåker was originally born as Ragnar Eriksson on a farm in central Sweden. However, he did not take over the farm from his parents, but instead joined the Swedish Air Force , where he acquired his license and became a fighter pilot. He was also involved in UN missions such as B. 1960 in Zaire, used. At this time he got his first contact with shooting sports through training with the military pistol. In 1965 he finished his military service and opened a gas station in Ängelholm in the south of Sweden . For this he took the name Skanåker because Eriksson seemed too familiar to him.

In Ängelholm he began to occupy himself more with pistol shooting and through targeted training he was able to be accepted into the Swedish national team. 1966 Skanaker took part for the first time in a world championship and finished 66th. In 1972 he was able to take part in the Summer Olympics in Munich for the first time , where he became Olympic champion with the free pistol with an Olympic record of 567 rings. In the further course of his career Ragnar Skanåker took part in another six Olympic Games until 1996. At the World Championships in Caracas 1982 Skanaker was world champion with the free pistol. With a total of seven Olympic Games, Skanåker is one of the athletes with the most participations .

Sporting successes

Olympic games

	discipline	space
Munich 1972	Free pistol	1.
Montreal 1976	Free pistol	5.
Moscow 1980	Free pistol	7th
Los Angeles 1984	Free pistol	2.
Seoul 1988	Free pistol	2.
	Air pistol	11.
Barcelona 1992	Free pistol	3.
	Air pistol	26th
Atlanta 1996	Free pistol	25th
	Air pistol	26th

After Atlanta Skanåker resigned from the national team, but continued to take part in national championships and competitions, which he also mostly won.

He announced his resignation for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens , but the Swedish NOK did not think much of it and did not want to nominate him. Due to his outstanding services and his shooting results, which were still ready for medals, he received a wildcard from the ISSF that would have enabled him to start in Athens without qualifying. However, the Swedish NOK thwarted his plans by not accepting him into the Swedish Olympic team on the grounds that a seventy-year-old no longer fit into an event for the world's youth. Skanåker himself took this relatively calmly and referred to another opportunity in 2008 in Beijing .

Ragnar Skanåker also passed on his vast experience to various weapon manufacturers. He worked with the American manufacturer Crosman in the construction of the Match Air Pistol 88 and with the Swiss manufacturer Morini in the development of the Free Pistol CM84E. For several years, Skanaker also worked as a shooter in the air pistol Bundesliga for the Geestemünder Turnverein (GTV) in Bremerhaven .

He first took part as a trainer at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He looked after the Icelandic pistol shooter Ásgeir Sigurgeirsson.

literature

• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle III. Mexico City 1968 - Los Angeles 1984. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00741-5 .
• Ragnar Skanaker, Laslo Antal: Sporting pistol shooting . Motorbuch, ISBN 3-613-01425-4

Web links

• Ragnar Skanåker in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Skanåker till OS som tränare. In: nyhetsdatabasen.se. July 10, 2012, Retrieved September 8, 2012 (Swedish).