On October 3 and 4, at the Olympic Shooting Range in Nicosia, Sofie Panfilova will find herself on the firing line of a Grand Prix for the first time, rifle in hand, facing 200 clay targets. It’s not exactly what you’d expect from a 33-year-old clinical dietitian, a specialist in preventive medicine and longevity.
And yet, that’s exactly what it is.
“If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be preparing for a Grand Prix, I would definitely have laughed. Because I never had an athletic background. And now I’m becoming an athlete in real time,” she tells SHOOTANDGOAL.
“I don’t think shooting came because I was looking for something I was missing. I have a full life, my work, my career, and I feel that it’s a stable life. Shooting started as a completely new chapter and made my life even bigger, even more interesting. I just added something. I wasn’t looking for something, but I found something very, very interesting.”
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Before becoming the girl with the gun in her hands, Sofie, a Czech citizen with roots in Russia, was—and remains—a clinical dietitian, with more than a decade of experience helping people prevent diseases before they appear. She studied at a medical school in Prague, worked with patients for years, studied the foundations of longevity, and designed nutritional and rehabilitation programs.
Gradually, classic clinical practice began to feel too narrow to her. “I saw that conventional medicine reacts to the consequences instead of preventing the causes of disease,” she explains, describing how this led her into digital health, where medicine meets technology.
In the Czech Republic she became one of the first to implement personalized health solutions through telemedicine platforms, while in her collaboration with the Israeli company Biognostica, she developed cross-analysis blood technology for a deeper interpretation of laboratory results—an experience that shaped her understanding of health as a system that can be managed and improved.
It is precisely this ability to build difficult projects and to love challenges, as she says herself, that—without her expecting it—would help her endure in a completely different battlefield: a shooting range firing line.
“I think in my career I’ve built many difficult projects and I like challenges. I like dealing with difficult things. And in shooting I encountered something similar. It’s very demanding. And I like it.”
It All Started By Chance
Sofie’s relationship with Cyprus didn’t start this year. She had lived here for the first time in 2010, for a few years, before returning to Prague, where she spent most of her adult life, though she never stopped visiting the island frequently. This past December she made the decision to settle in Cyprus permanently—and, ultimately, for shooting to find its way into her life.
It all started almost by chance. It was her boyfriend who first took her to a shooting range, without her knowing anything about the sport. “I tried it and I liked it a lot,” she recalls. That Christmas, he gave her shooting lessons as a gift with the coach she still has today. “And I fell completely in love with this sport,” she says characteristically.
“That’s how it started, completely unexpectedly. He introduced me to shooting because Cyprus is a paradise for shooters. And I understand that now—there are amazing shooting ranges here. I train and around me are all champions. And that’s very inspiring.”
Before she picked up a gun, she had no athletic background at all. She went to the gym sometimes, enjoyed an active lifestyle, but had never engaged with any sport in her life, nor did she even watch shooting on television.
“I knew, of course, that this sport existed. But I knew nothing about it. I never watched it, never read about it. It was something completely new to me. And now it’s a new world for me.”
Her biggest obstacle wasn’t technical—it was psychological. “I’m now dealing with a big challenge, because suddenly, when you’re an adult and you’re used to being a professional at something, you find yourself a beginner again and starting from scratch. You make a lot of mistakes, you ask ‘stupid’ questions, and sometimes it’s very difficult to accept that you’re just learning something from zero,” Sofie tells us characteristically.
And when we remind her that every beginner, whatever their age, goes through this stage, she doesn’t disagree, but stresses that for an adult it’s different: “Yes. But still, I think it’s a little harder for an adult.”
“One moment you’re a beginner and you’re starting completely from the beginning, and you have a lot of problems. You ask stupid questions. And sometimes it’s very hard to see yourself as a beginner and to understand that you’re just learning something from zero,” she tells SHOOTANDGOAL.
Shooting, she says, surprised her because it’s not just a matter of physical condition. “It’s much, much more about your psychological state. It’s about your state of mind.” When she misses a target, she needs to stay calm—and that, she says, is the hardest part: “It’s about focus, patience, and your ability to do something again and again and again. To repeat something many times.”
Her coach himself has taught her to focus on just one target at a time. “He tells me I need to think only about one target. Not about the previous targets, not about the next one, not about all the upcoming competitions. I need to be focused only on one target. It sounds easy, but in reality it’s much harder than it seems,” she says characteristically.
Her Biggest Experiment
The sport, as she describes it, became her biggest personal experiment: “I think shooting is my biggest personal experiment. I’m very curious to see how far I can go if I train hard. How far I can go if I listen to my coach, if I stay focused, if I work on my state of mind. And in this experiment I’m very curious.” After a bad training day, however, doubts come: “Especially after bad training days, I ask myself: ‘My God, what am I doing? Where am I? I’m shooting next to champions, they’re shooting perfectly. I’ve just started and I don’t know if I can do this.’ But the next day, I come back.”
“Sometimes you come to the range and everything goes well. You hit the target, you’re very happy about it. And sometimes you come and you can’t hit any target. You try again and again, and your coach repeats the same things again and again, and you try to understand it. But then you give it a try and nothing goes well. You have the feeling that you can’t do anything with that particular target. And sometimes it’s like two hours of not hitting any target. And of course, you have the feeling that it’s going to last forever.”
Her friends and family, she says, were initially surprised—no one in her circle had ever been involved in shooting. “I think everyone was somewhat surprised, because it’s really unusual. No one in our family is a shooter or a shooting sports athlete. So yes, it was very strange for everyone. Then, of course, they started supporting me, because everyone sees that I’m taking it seriously. And I really appreciate that support, because it helps me a lot.”
And the shooting community in Limassol itself, she says, helped her overcome her initial fear that everyone would judge her while she’s still learning—a fear that, as she admits, she also feels on Instagram, where she shows her journey before even “getting good at it,” as she tells us. “It was a huge surprise for me, because I was worried seeing people watching me. And yet, people come—people here at the range that I don’t even know—and tell me that I can do it, that I need to keep going.”
Her first contact with the trigger of the rifle, she says, had none of the fear one might expect. “It was amazing, actually. I wasn’t scared at all. I had no fear,” she says, remembering the moment. “And I thought, ‘Wow, this is life. This is amazing.’ I really liked it.” It was, in fact, the first time she had ever held such a gun in her hands—today she has her own.
We asked Sofie not only what she felt, but what she thought would happen the moment she pulled the trigger for the first time. “I think you don’t have time to think, so I just did it. And I think it’s not so much about thoughts as about feelings. It’s a very emotional moment, and even though it’s hard and the gun is very heavy, that moment is very, very beautiful. It was amazing.”
She still remembers the first target she ever hit. “I remember it was target C at the Armenochori shooting range, in my very first training session, and my coach was even happier than me. He told me: ‘See, now you see, you can do it.’ And yes, it’s a wonderful feeling, and at that moment you understand—and this is what I like about this sport—you only compete with yourself, it’s just you and this target.” From that moment she also built a philosophy that she follows on every bad day: “And this is very, very interesting actually—every target you miss is a piece of information for me, and I try to see it that way. Every missed target is information about what I need to improve.”
“It’s an expensive sport, of course. It requires some expenses, naturally. The coach, the cartridges, the guns. But when you’re dedicated to it, you know, you don’t think about it,” says Sofie. During our visit to the International Shooting Range of Limassol, in Armenochori, we saw up close what this means in practice: the cartridges and targets are bought by the athletes themselves, and a simple training session, including the coach’s fee, costs around 100 euros. The equipment itself isn’t cheap either: the coach’s gun costs around 11,500 euros, while Sofie’s costs around 4,000 euros. At competitions, we were told, you always go with your own gun. Sofie trains usually two to three times a week, and the club, as her coach, 59-year-old Renos Georgiades, told us, tries to support the talents that come through there as much as it can.
She herself clearly remembers how different it felt when she started her training: “In the beginning it was almost impossible for me to shoot 100 targets. I was so tired. I would come home and fall asleep sitting up.” Today, after months of training, things have changed considerably: “Now, in a training session we usually shoot around 100 to 150 targets. And on weekends, if we want to have more fun, sometimes we shoot even 200 targets. And for me now it’s totally fine, I don’t get that tired anymore. I’ve gotten used to it.”
From a Hobby to Something Much More Serious
What started as a Christmas present gradually evolved into something much more serious. “I think it started slowly. Of course, at first I saw it as a hobby. And then I started training three times a week, more and more. And I started having bad training days. And I started coming back after all those days. And I think that’s when you understand that it’s not a hobby anymore, it’s something more.” The turning point, she says, was exactly this persistence: “You come back after the bad training days. Because when you’re trying to get better at something, to improve at something, it’s not always comfortable. So when it stopped being so comfortable and so fun, and I kept coming back and listening to my coach more and more, I understood that we were now preparing for something.”
We asked Sofie what her best score is to date. The answer concerns a charity competition at the Beretta club, where she suddenly found herself facing targets she had never seen before. “My best score so far was at a small competition. We shot at a charity competition at the Beretta club. And it was 37 out of 50. For me, that was very demanding, because I found myself on a shooting field I had never tried before. I just came and started shooting. We arrived at Beretta and the competition had already started. I just took my gun and started shooting targets I had never seen before. It was quite demanding. And my coach said it was a very good result.”
From that competition she also kept her first cup, although, as she says laughing, “as I said on Instagram, I was the only girl shooting. I was the only woman in my category. That’s why I have this gold cup.” The second cup, however, came in a more touching way, as a gift from a senior champion at the range: “Yes, I started with this cup (laughs). And one of the senior champions at the range, who has a lot of cups at home, when he got one more a few months ago, he gave it to me and said, ‘this is for you.’ So I already have two cups at home. I have a special place in my house for the trophies. And I hope soon this place will have more cups.”
A Sofie Training Session Up Close
At this same range, we watched a training session of Sofie’s with her coach. “Today’s training is more about how we shoot double targets and simultaneous targets,” he explained to us before the shooting began.
Before even picking up the gun, Sofie did reflex exercises with a yellow tennis ball, so that her eye would get used to focusing on the color, exactly as it focuses on the color of the clay targets in the air. At one point, the exercise became even more demanding: she tried to catch the ball with her eyes closed, relying only on her other senses.
In the shooting that followed, Sofie started very well, but there were also moments when something wasn’t going as it should. The coach stopped each time, gave her notes, asked her to identify her own mistake before explaining it to her. “Sofie, you’re behind the target,” he told her at one point during the training, trying to show her the correct aiming position. Another time, he took his own gun—that 11,500-euro gun—and showed her, taking her position on the stand, in practice what she needed to do.
He also explained to us how simultaneous targets should be shot: the first one must be hit quickly, so that there’s enough time and margin left for the second one. He had diagrams with him showing different shooting positions, stands, and angles, to explain the correct aiming direction depending on the shooter’s position. He also showed us the correct mounting of the gun, a detail that, as Sofie herself told us, took her several months to get her body used to, along with the correct body movement depending on the target.
Renos Charalambous started coaching in 2013. “I started coaching timidly, timidly, in 2013, first with my son.” Thirteen years later, he finds himself preparing a 33-year-old dietitian for her first Grand Prix. “Sofia, in the three months she’s been with me, is at a very good level and a very good stage,” he says, although he admits that at first he wasn’t sure what to expect. “At first with Sofie I thought she would struggle. But when someone has talent and likes what they’re doing, they’ll do everything to succeed.”
At the Cyprus Grand Prix, Sofie will compete under the colors of the Czech Republic, since she holds Czech citizenship. “I tried to register her with the Cyprus Federation, but it’s difficult. She can register, but she’ll compete as a guest,” her coach explains. Even so, she feels she represents more than just one flag: “I have the Czech flag on my vest, because I’m a Czech national. But at the same time I feel that I also represent my coach, and it’s very nice that I feel I partly represent Cyprus too, because my journey started here and I feel it’s like a second home to me.”
When we asked her coach what it was like for him to train a 33-year-old who had only just picked up a rifle for the first time, he replied that he’s willing to accept any new athlete, as long as they have enthusiasm and some talent. “I’m ready to start training anyone who wants to, as long as they want to do it and have enthusiasm, and have a bit of talent too. Shooting needs a bit of talent too. You see the talent as things progress.”
He himself sets no age limits: “They can compete for as long as they feel good doing this sport, as long as they have a health certificate with the Federation. We have athletes over 75 years old who still go to international competitions. I’m 59 and I feel 40.” He himself got into competitive coaching relatively recently, in the last two to three years, but what satisfies him most today is something else: “What I like most now is training people and producing champions.”
Technically, Mr. Georgiades stresses that what a shooter needs most isn’t the hand, but the mind and the eyes: “What someone needs most is the mind and the eyes. Many people who start shooting don’t know that they need to shoot with their dominant eye, the so-called master eye. We find the master eye with tests we do. You see the image in its true position. In shooting you compete with both eyes open, because with one eye closed your reflexes are greatly reduced.”
The psychological part, as Sofie’s own experience shows, is equally decisive, especially during a competition: “The psychology issue is an important factor that we work on more during competitions. To keep your self-confidence during a competition, we try to place more emphasis on their own program and their own targets, and to make sure they don’t learn the results of other athletes during the competition. I don’t want Sofie to know the results of others, so she doesn’t lose her self-confidence.” Even during the pauses between shots, this logic doesn’t change: “During the waiting time we have rest time and we’re not interested in anything else. I might take a look, but never my athlete.” And he has a story that explains why he insists on this so much: “There was a time when I had an athlete who was in fifth place and finished second—if I had told him the result beforehand, maybe he wouldn’t have finished there.”
We asked the coach whether he trains a woman differently than a man. “It’s the same thing to train a girl as a man. It’s the way we start a training session and the techniques on the targets that exist. I always keep a steady approach with both men and women, I’m a bit strict and I try to keep them focused on the targets and on what I tell them,” he replies. He is, however, critical of the sport’s institutional support: “The Cyprus Sports Organisation (KOA) doesn’t help very much financially. Even though we have a lot of talent, I believe KOA doesn’t help as much as it should—they place more emphasis on the Olympic shooting disciplines.”
But how demanding is a training session he does with Sofie? “In a typical training session with Sofie we do 100 targets. In international competitions it’s 200 targets, over four days, 50 targets a day.” And as for what success would mean for Sofie at the upcoming Cyprus Grand Prix, he puts a number on it: “For Sofie, based on my experience, a good result at the next major competition would be to hit over 170 targets. She can achieve that.” The point that needs work, he concludes, is specific: “Sofie needs to further improve her stance and her performance on double and simultaneous targets.”
For Sofie herself, the coach’s role goes beyond technique. “I have huge support from my coach. Because I think a good coach isn’t only about technique. It’s also about finding the right words. But at the same time, it’s about being honest. So especially on bad days, I feel that even when he gives me honest feedback about what’s going on, he usually finds the right words to support me. And he always finds something positive, even on a bad day. That supports me a lot,” she says.
She still remembers Renos’s first reaction, when she told him she wanted to become a shooter: “He told me: ‘I see how you shoot, you’re the next champion.’ I thought he was joking. I was laughing. I was like, okay, thank you very much. And he continued: ‘So I’m waiting for you for training. Let’s start. We’ll do this.’ He was so sure about it that I thought—let’s give it a try.’”
At no point, in fact, did she feel that her coach thought she was unprepared because she started late. “Not at all. He was very, very supportive. He told me about all the champions he had trained, about everyone who trains at the range. He introduced me to other very good shooters. They have very interesting training sessions all the time, different programs.”
Beyond shooting, her coach also became something of a bridge to Cyprus. They train three times a week, and he himself picks her up and brings her from her home to the range—and along the way, he teaches her Greek. “He’s not just my coach at the range. He helps me learn Greek, he helps me feel closer to the community. We have a great relationship. He’s Cypriot. And he helps me feel closer to the community. And that’s a very important part.”
She Learned Things About Herself She Didn’t Know
Shooting, Sofie tells us, revealed a side of herself she didn’t know. “I think I’m now discovering a completely new version of myself,” she says. “Because I can say that in my professional life, in my career, as I said, I like difficult challenges and I know how to stay focused. But this is something completely new. I’m discovering a version of myself in a competitive sporting environment. And I’m still learning to be more focused, calmer, and more patient. I’m still learning to manage my emotions when I miss a target. So this is absolutely a new version of myself.”
This change, she says, doesn’t stay confined to the range. “Now, shooting isn’t something that only exists at the range. Most of my life now has to do with shooting. I come home and talk about my training. I watch videos of other shooters on the internet, because it really helps me improve,” she says, explaining how her Instagram blog connected her with other athletes in the sport. “When I started my blog on Instagram, I started following other shooters, and all the time I discover something new. I’m constantly learning, and my mind is always on flying targets.”
Despite the intensity of her new “second life” here in Cyprus, Sofie says she hasn’t had to sacrifice almost anything from her professional life. “To be honest, not much,” she says. She left behind some big projects she had in the Czech Republic, but she had already decided to do that before she even started shooting: “I left some big projects I had in the Czech Republic, but I left them before I started shooting, because I decided it was time to start something new and focus more on my personal life and on clinical nutrition.” She continues to have clients in nutritional therapy programs and maintains her own team of nutritionists who work with clients, precisely because she wanted more time for herself. “But now I’ve started spending time with shooters.”
Her own professional knowledge, in fact, now proves useful to her in a completely different way. “Yes, I think it helps a lot, honestly, because I understand my body, I understand physiology, I understand what the right nutrition looks like. Before, I helped my clients achieve something in sports, and now I’m my own client. It helps a lot. Of course, it doesn’t help on the range when you’re shooting clays, but at home, for example, I understand what I need to eat, how to eat right, how to recover properly.”
She even uses an entire system of technological tools to monitor her health: “I use various gadgets to look after my health. I wear a continuous glucose monitor, so I can see how sports activity affects my blood sugar, and so on.” She also systematically monitors her blood biomarkers. “I understand, of course, how to read my blood markers and I check all of them. I take vitamins, etc.” Thanks to her background in digital health—a combination of technology and medicine—she has built, on her own, through coding, her own “smart” system that brings all this data together in one place. “So it’s very interesting, because I have real-time information about my health.” And she adds: “Before I worked with clients and saw this thing, and now I’m working with myself—it’s very interesting.”
We asked whether all this systematic monitoring—nutrition, sleep, everything—doesn’t ultimately stop her from living her life more freely. “Honestly, I don’t feel that way. Yes, I monitor a lot of things, I control a lot of things. But at the same time, maybe because I already knew all of this, it’s not that difficult for me. And basically I have the feeling that now I’m living my life to the fullest. I’m so curious about everything that’s happening. So yes, I think that now I’m living my life to the fullest.”
This, however, doesn’t mean she has become ascetic. We asked whether she can still loosen her rules a bit—one dinner, one night out—now that she’s preparing for the Grand Prix and has a tight schedule. “Yes, of course I can. I don’t drink alcohol at all. I don’t smoke. And to be honest, I don’t usually go out late. But I don’t think that’s because of the training, it’s just the lifestyle I live. But yes, of course, I can eat a very sweet dessert together with Cypriot coffee (laughs). And of course, I can spoil myself sometimes.”
But it isn’t, as she herself has now discovered, as easy to follow her own health advice as it is to give it to others as part of her job. “I think it’s harder, because when I work with a client, the client has me and can rely on me. They can text me their questions. I support them and they’re not alone on their journey. And here, on my own journey, on this nutritional side, it’s just me and me. I have to be motivated enough to do this even when no one is watching. So yes, I think that’s a bit harder.”
Sofie’s clinical experience isn’t limited to adult athletes. In the Czech Republic she had clients who were professional athletes from different sports, but also children. “I had professional athlete clients, I also had children.” Her work with young athletes, as she explains, has its own particularities: “In children’s nutrition, I mostly had athletes. And it’s a very delicate subject, because the child is growing very fast. At the same time, they’re spending a huge amount of energy in training. And you need to balance all of that with nutrition.”
One issue she finds particularly sensitive is childhood obesity, a problem that, as she discovered, isn’t limited to the Czech Republic. “I also have a lot of children with obesity, which is a big problem. And I discovered that here in Cyprus it’s also a very big problem. Right now Cyprus is number one in Europe in childhood obesity.” She intends to continue working as a dietitian in this area too: “I think I’ll continue working as a dietitian. I’ll definitely work with athletes. And I also want to promote this active lifestyle, sports, for adults, and of course for children too.”
The Conscious Choice Behind Her “Journey”
Sofie’s Instagram isn’t the showcase of an already successful athlete—it’s exactly the opposite, and that was a conscious choice on her part. “I think most people show something only after they’ve already succeeded. And maybe it’s easier to show something when you’re already successful or a professional,” she says. “But I decided to invite people to follow my journey while I’m still not good at it. I decided to invite them to come along with me and see where this journey takes me.” At first, she admits, it was difficult precisely because it meant publicly showing that she’s a beginner. But the response convinced her to continue: “When I started, I had huge support from different shooters all over the world. And I decided to continue, because it was very, very nice of them. So, as I said, the shooting community is very friendly, very supportive, even within a competition.”
“I think my story is really about starting something new, even if you’re afraid to do it. The same goes for my blog. If my blog helps someone start something they were afraid of, something they always wanted but never started—not necessarily shooting, maybe something else—then I think my story would already be worth telling,” she adds.
We asked Sofie whether she had ever faced negative comments for being a woman in a sport that many consider “masculine.” Her answer wasn’t only about shooting: “I haven’t had negative comments about that, but I think I’ll be happy, over the next five years, to help make shooting more popular among women, because I believe women don’t have to have just one role their entire life. You can be a woman, you can be feminine, and at the same time you can be strong. You can be a dietitian and you can be a shooter. You can be whatever you want to be. Because only you can decide what you’re capable of, where your limits are, and what you can achieve in your life.”
In our conversation with her, we asked what she thinks will be the biggest obstacle on her path. “I think I don’t have illusions about my journey, that it won’t be without obstacles, and I think I face obstacles every day, at every training session. I think it has to do with mindset, so I’m ready to continue my journey even when it’s hard and even when it feels impossible, because sometimes it does feel impossible. So I think these are obstacles—there will be obstacles.”
“There were some days when I came home very tired and realized I could have done better, that I could have hit the target I didn’t hit, and it’s very emotional, and sometimes it’s very hard to deal with these emotions.” The solution, however, is always the same: “But I think it’s about coming back to the range after these days, and I will keep coming back all the time, and I think that’s the most important thing.”
With the Cyprus Grand Prix approaching, Sofie doesn’t pretend she isn’t feeling anxious. “I would be lying if I said there’s no pressure, or that I’m not nervous. Of course I’m nervous. There is pressure,” she admits. “And sometimes I just try not to think about it. I try to focus on the specific date. On the specific training sessions. And on the specific targets I need to learn and improve. And to be honest, I have a lot of support. I have a lot of support at home. And I have huge support from my coach.”
The Grand Prix itself, however, she doesn’t see as a final destination, but as a milestone. “The Grand Prix isn’t the final destination. It’s a very important milestone for me. Because it’s going to be a big, serious competition. But of course, it’s not the final destination. And afterward I’ll be preparing for other competitions.” Her coach himself, in fact, already has a plan for the future: “When I come to the range, my coach very often tells me, ‘don’t forget that next year we’re going to Italy, we’re going to the Czech Republic, we’re going to Greece.’ He already has a plan of competitions we’re going to shoot. But of course, right now I’m trying to focus only on the Cyprus Grand Prix.” Her goal for this year’s event is clear: “I want to be as good as I can be. Because I’m really taking this seriously, I want to be on the podium one day. I want medals. And I want to achieve all of this, because I’m really taking it seriously.”
Five years from now, she imagines herself more experienced, much improved. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I see myself with some big and important achievements. I think five years is more than enough, if you train hard, to achieve something. And that’s my plan. It’s a big journey and I want to enjoy it, because it’s not only about the final destination, the medals or the podiums. Of course I want those too, but I want to enjoy this journey, to improve myself, to build a good community of shooters that promotes an active lifestyle, shooting, proper nutrition, an active and healthy life. That’s one of my main goals, honestly. And that’s what I want to do over these next five years—not just shoot for medals.”
At Armenochori, as that day’s training session came to an end, Renos Charalambous watched her prepare her gun for one more round of targets. A few months earlier, she was simply a woman who had never held a gun in her hands. In October, she will stand on the firing line of a Grand Prix, with 200 targets in front of her.
