Inês Barros Makes History with Sixth-Place Finish, Targets Paris 2028
Few Portuguese sports fans were awake when the clay targets started flying over Athens at dawn, yet by lunchtime social media was buzzing: Inês Barros had just done what no woman from Portugal had ever managed at a Shotgun World Championship. The 25-year-old from Leiria surged into the Olympic Trap final and closed the day in 6th place, cementing her status as the face of Portuguese clay-shooting and nudging the country a step closer to another Olympic berth.
A breakthrough in Athens
The 2025 World Championship unfolded on the historic grounds of the Markópoulo Shooting Centre, the same venue that staged the Athens 2004 Olympics. While the Hellenic backdrop was familiar, Portugal’s presence in a women’s final was entirely new. Barros punched her ticket by hitting 117 of 125 targets across two days of qualifying—good enough for a sudden-death shoot-off where she calmly dispatched two rivals to claim the last open slot. The achievement instantly rewrote the record books of the Federação Portuguesa de Tiro, whose previous best in women’s Trap had been a 14th place in 2019.
Inside the medal round
Under a blistering Greek sun, the championship decider required each finalist to face 25 fast-rising clays. Barros broke 17 targets, an effort that left her four discs shy of bronze yet well ahead of seasoned finalists from China and Cyprus. Spain’s Mar Molne Magrina sealed gold with 46 hits in the longer duel for the title, while Italy’s Silvana Maria Stanco and Poland’s Sandra Bernal completed the podium. In the mixed-team event the following afternoon, Barros reunited with João Azevedo, her gold-medal partner from Baku 2023, but the pair could not find their rhythm and settled for 12th.
What it means for Paris 2028
Although the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) has not released the full quota map for the next Olympics, past cycles suggest that a top-6 finish at a world championship normally unlocks a host-nation spot. If that template holds, Portugal should bank at least one female Trap quota for Paris 2028, ensuring that Barros or another compatriot takes the line on the Seine. The young shooter has form in this department: she secured Portugal’s earliest shooting quota for Paris 2024 by winning the 2023 European Championship and later earned an Olympic diploma with a 6th-place shoot-off in France.
Lifting an entire discipline
Barros’s ascent comes at a time when Portuguese federated shooting is courting fresh investment after years in the shadows of football, futsal and surfing. According to the federation, youth registrations in clay-target clubs rose 23 % in the past 12 months, a spike many attribute to Barros’s televised appearance at the Paris Games. Her coach, Rui Rocha, says the goal is to build a sustainable pipeline that extends beyond one star athlete. “Inês has shown that Portugal can compete with the traditional powers. Now we need three or four more shooters knocking on the door of every final,” he told reporters in Athens.
Where to next
The World Cup circuit restarts in February with a stop in Doha, followed by March dates in Granada—two venues where Barros has already claimed podium finishes at junior level. At home, the federation plans to stage an open day at the Lisbon Shooting Range in early December, offering free instruction to women and teenagers. If participation figures continue to climb, Portugal could send its largest ever shotgun delegation to the 2027 European Games in Istanbul, the last major checkpoint before Paris 2028.
For now, though, the country is savouring a milestone long thought beyond reach: a Portuguese woman lining up among the world’s elite and proving, one cracked target at a time, that a small federation can dream big on the global stage.