Information
The Vráž parcour shooting range
The owner and operator of the Vráž parcour shooting range
The owner and operator of the Vráž parcour shooting range is the state-owned company Lesy České republiky (Czech Republic Woodlands), Lesní závod Konopiště (LZ Konopiště – Konopiště Woodland Company).
Lesy České republiky
The state-owned company Lesy České republiky (LČR)manages some 1,400,000 hectares of wooded land which is the property of the state. It also administers 20,000 kilometres of small and larger streams. The company is based in the city of Hradec Králové in the east of Bohemia.
Lesní závod Konopiště is an organisational unit of LČR and manages some 18,000 ha of woodlands. It has a great hunting tradition, particularly pheasant hunting. Every year hunters from all corners of Europe come to hunt pheasant and partridge, bagging some 50,000 birds a year. The company also organises the hunting of fallow deer and mouflons in their game preserves and the hunting of roe deer and wild boars on their free hunting grounds.
Parcour is the best simulation of hunting the animals as a sport shooting. The Woodland Company, in co-operation with the late Hubert Zoske of Germany and the president of the ASAT Antonín Walter, held the 1996 parcour Grand Prix on 20 shooting ranges directly in the area around the pheasant grounds and Konopiště castle. The competition was a success and the Konopiště Woodland Company therefore decided to build a parcour shooting range at Vráž very close to the Prague-Brno motorway.
The Vráž parcour shooting range welcomed its first shooter in 1999. The stands were not situated on an adapted existing skeet or trap shooting range but were purposefully built in a green belt area especially for the purposes of a parcour range. We can dare to say that this is the only shooting range of this kind in the former Eastern Bloc.
The high level of technical and organisational skills can be seen in the results of and the reactions to the FITASC Grand Prix Prague held in 2001, to the Grand Prix Prague-Browning Cup in 2000 and the GP Prague held in 1996. We believe that the prestige of the shooting range is already well known to many shooters and also to FITASC officials. Miroslav Jankovský (director of LZ Konopiště) and Antonín Walter (president of the ASAT) are the guarantors of high standards in organising the 2003 European Championships.
Facts about the shooting range:
- Opened 1999
- Area 150 ha
- Location about 30 km from Prague near the D1 motorway (between Prague and Brno)
- 16 parcour shooting stands with almost unlimited room to expand. The shooting ranges are incorporated into growing woods.
- 20 shooting stands (and one training range) would be used to host the 2003 European Parcour Championships - see map.
- At the moment LZ Konopiště has at its disposal clay-target traps for twelve shooting ranges at five machines each.
- Parking
- 100 parking places at the shooting range's social centre itself
- 200 parking places nearby (200m from the shooting range centre)
- 200 more parking places 500m away available if necessary
- Catering, social facilities - a building containing a restaurant and a bar that can accommodate 100 guests will be completed by spring 2002. There will also be a covered outside area capable of accommodating 100 people. There will be room for another 150 people to sit outside.
- The building that is being prepared will be equipped with sufficient social facilities.
- The complete building will be accessible to shooters in wheelchairs.
- There will be a shuttle transport system between the shooting range and the central part of the range and the car park during the 2003 European Parcour Championships.
- The dates for the 2003 European Parcour Championships can be chosen according to the wishes of the FITASC. We propose however that they be held in the period between June and September 2003.
