Saskatoon Star Phoenix [Souvenir Edition]
July 26, 1952. p.1
Helsinki [CP]
George Genereaux, 17-year-old Saskatoon school boy, today won the clay pigeon trapshooting championship at the Olympic games.
Genereux's brilliant performance gave Canada its first Olympic gold medal since 1936.
Genereux won as Sweden's Kuut Holmquist missed the 24th of his final 25 shots to lose by one bird. Genereux had a point total of 192 out of a possible 200.
Holmquist need a perfect round of 25 "kills" to tie the Canadian.
Genereux's teammate, Roy Cole of Hamilton placed 13th in the competion.
Genereux's eight-round total of 192 points was the figure he predicted earlier would win the championship. His scores for the eight rounds were: 24-24-24-23-24-24-25-24, a remarkably consistent record.
Genereux is holder of the North American junior and Saskatchewan open trapshooting championships. The six-foot, dark-haired youth with the crew cut won the mid-western invitation trapshooting handicap in Winnipeg in 1949 when he was only 14. In that same year and in 1950 he won the Manitoba-Saskatchewan junior championship.
He won the North American title last year.
Today's final shoot between the lad from the Canadian West and the 34-year-old Swedish furniture merchant was the second dramatic struggle between the two.
Today it looked as though another shoot-off were in prospect. On his last round, Genereux, the gallery's favorite, fired a 24 out of a possible 25, missing on his 24th shot to spoil what would have been his second straight perfect round.
The only competitor who could catch Genereux was Holmquist, shooting his first year in international competition. With Holmquist needing a 25 for a tie, and a shoot-off, it looked for a long time as though he would make it as 23 straight birds fell.
Then the Swede missed the 24th, just as Genereux had done before him, and the title went to Canada. It was Canada's first clay pigeon crown since W.H. Ewing of Montreal won it in 1908.
Genereux fired as his mother, Mrs. Catherine Genereux, watched from the gallery. He will receive his Olympic gold medal - Canada's first of the 1952 games - in a ceremony Sunday.
Genereux acquired his love for trapshooting by tagging along with his father hunting prairie chickens.
