Shooting at the 1964 Summer Olympics – Men's trap

The men's trap was a shooting sports event held as part of the Shooting at the 1960 Summer Olympics programme. The competition was held from 15 to 17 October 1964 at the Tokorozawa Clay Pigeon Shooting Range in Tokorozawa, Saitama. 51 shooters from 28 nations competed. Each nation could send up to two shooters. The event was won by Ennio Mattarelli of Italy, the nation's second victory in three Games in the event. Pāvels Seničevs of the Soviet Union took silver. William Morris earned the United States' first medal in the trap since 1924 with his bronze. Seničevs and Morris defeated Galliano Rossini of Italy in a three-way shoot-off for second; Rossini (who had won gold in the event in 1956 and silver in 1960) thus just missed earning a third medal in the trap. Defending champion Ion Dumitrescu of Romania finished fifth.

Background
This was the ninth appearance of the men's ISSF Olympic trap event. The event was held at every Summer Olympics from 1896 to 1924 (except 1904, when no shooting events were held) and from 1952 to 2016; it was open to women from 1968 to 1996.

Eight of the top 11 (including a tie for 10th) shooters from the 1960 Games returned, including all three medalists: gold medalist Ion Dumitrescu of Romania, silver medalist Galliano Rossini of Italy, bronze medalist Sergei Kalinin of the Soviet Union, sixth-place finisher Joe Wheater of Great Britain, seventh-place finisher Adam Smelczyński of Poland, eighth-place finishers Claude Foussier of France and Karni Singh of India, and tenth-place finisher Laszlo Szapáry of Austria. Rossini was also a former champion (gold in 1956) and was competing in the event for the fourth time. Smelczyński had been the silver medalist to Rossini in 1956. In the two World Championships since 1960, Dumitrescu had taken a bronze (1961) and Singh had taken silver (1962). The 1961 World Champion, Ennio Mattarelli, joined Rossini for a formidable Italian pair.

Israel, Pakistan, and Rhodesia each made their debut in the event. Great Britain made its ninth appearance, the only nation to have competed at each edition of the event to that point.

Competition format
The competition used the 200-target format introduced with the return of trap to the Olympics in 1952. The 1964 event dropped the two-round competition that had been used in 1960; only a single round of shooting was done, with all shooters facing 200 targets. Shooting was done in 8 series of 25 targets.

Records
Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.

Ennio Mattarelli of Italy set a new Olympic record at 198.