Mudgee’s Jake Mackenzie will be shooting in the open category the next time he competes at the Fédération Internationale de Tir aux Armes Sportives de Chasse (FITASC) world sporting clays championships.

Mackenzie is enjoying the Spanish sun for a few more days following his performance at the latest world championships, his fourth in the junior category.

Despite not shooting his best, Mackenzie had a great time.

“Worlds were fantastic,” Mackenzie said.

“Overall I had a great time shooting for Australia. Being my last year in juniors I had really hoped to bring home gold.

“Despite not shooting my best I still had a valuable learning experience competing at a world class level.”

There were eight layouts competitors had to shoot, two per day of 50 targets.

Mackenzie started on layout five and shot 22 out of 25 targets.

His best was on the eighth layout where he shot 24 targets. However, scoring two lots of 17 targets on layouts two and seven gave the 20-year-old a total score of 165, a tie for 22nd in the junior category and a tie for 248th overall out of 747 shooters.

Britain’s Jack Lovick (187) and George Digweed (194) won the junior and open categories respectively.

In the Team event, Mackenzie’s Australian junior team of himself, Jack Gibbs and Jeremy Paglia finished sixth with a total of 505 targets. 

The United States took out the gold on 549 followed by Great Britain on 544 and France on 532.

Gibbs’ picked up a bronze medal in the individual junior world cup; an average of world shoots from the year.

Australia’s women’s team picked up a bronze medal in the Team event, edging out Latvia.

United States won gold on 518 followed by Spain on 511 and Australia on 483.