Beretta wins all at the Paris Olympics
Italy's biggest and the world's oldest gunmaker scores big at the 2024 Olympic Games: clay shooters armed with Beretta shotguns won 93 percent of all medals in their disciplines
Beretta approached clay shooting competitions at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris – in three specialties: Skeet, Trap, and for the first time, Mixed Team Skeet – with a solid trust in both the skills of the shooters in the Beretta Team and the capabilities of their over-and-under shotguns: the DT11 family and the new SL2.
Given how over 54,7% of all clay shooters at the Paris Olympics used a Beretta shotgun, success was indeed expected, but the outcome of the 2024 Olympics defeated every anticipation: fourteen medals of the fifteen up for grabs in clay shooting competitions – more specifically five gold medals, as many silver medals, and four bronze medals – were brought home by shooters using Beretta shotguns, thus breaking the Company's previous record of ten medals overall dating back to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
We're talking about 93% of all the available medals, with a single bronze medal won by a Women's Trap shooter using a shotgun from a different brand.
Beretta hegemonized the podium in the Men's Trap shooting, with Nathan Hales (UK) winning the gold, followed by the Chinese shooter Ying Qi winning the silver medal and Pierre Brol Cardenas from Guatemala getting the bronze, all of them using a Beretta DT11 shotgun, like Italy's long-standing olympic clay shooting legend Giovanni "Johnny" Pellielo who lost his slot in the finals at the Shoot-Offs despite a great overall performance.
Beretta's DT11 also ruled the Women's Trap competition, being wielded by gold medal winner Silvana Stanco from Italy and silver medalist Adriana Ruano Oliva from Guatemala; Australian shooter Penny Smith and her Perazzi HT3 shotgun placed third and won the bronze medal.
Beretta's DT11 shotguns also monopolized the podium in Men's Skeet, with Vincent Hancock (USA) grabbing the gold medal with a stellar performance and another American shooter, Conner Lynn Prince, surprisingly winning silver: Paris 2024 were Prince's first ever Olympics, the shooter having secured his slot after winning the 2023 World Cup in Rabat. Lee Meng Yuan, another Beretta shooter from Taiwan, won the bronze medal; Tammaro Cassandro, yet another Beretta DT11 shooter and the only Italian shooter in Men's Skeet finals, placed fourth.
Basically the same story of Beretta success in Women's Skeet: Francisca Crovetto Chadid brought the gold medal back home to Chile, while the silver and bronze medals were won respectively by Amber Jo Rutter (UK) and Austen Jewell Smith (USA).
Last, but not least, Beretta's shotguns were at the top on the Mixed Team Skeet podium, with the gold medals won by Diana Bacosi and Gabriele Rossetti from Italy, with American shooters Vincent Hancock and Amber Smith bringing home the silver medal and the Chinese shooters' couple Jiang Yiting and Lyu Jianlin scoring bronze.
"This is a long history rife with excellence, whose results testify for the superb quality of our guns," said Carlo Ferlito, Beretta's CEO and general manager.
"Every innovation was one step ahead for us towards the creation of something extraordinary. This was a path of success and dreams come true, a long road travelled along with our athletes, an essential source of development in our quest to raise the bar ever higher. But reaching the intended objective isn't all: the main feeling is one of union, team playing, family. A family that grows up together, shooters and company together. And now onwards, to plan ahead for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games."