TRAP SHOOTING:Two easy bits of unbroken clay cost him. Yesterday morning, Irish shooter Derek Burnett needed a perfect score of 25 shots in the final round of the trap qualification to make the final.
After his commanding display of marksmanship on Saturday, he looked like a strong final prospect going into yesterday's competition, and so the Irish contingent set off for the Markopoulo centre, a beautiful venue carved snugly into the countryside outside Athens. No hills have held so much ammunition - at least none since the Donegal cops struck gold a few years ago.
Burnett's is a true Olympic story, faithfully pursuing a sport that is essentially underground in Ireland until the Games come around, when he happily shrugs at the intense and fleeting interest his skills provoke. With his girlfriend and best friend in the crowd to cheer him on, the rest of us gazed blankly at the sky like pilgrims on the hills of Medjugore.
Over an intense and draining two days, Burnett hit 119 of his targets, making a perfect 25 in his first round. The standard stayed that demanding. There was - as always - a Russian and American dual for supremacy at the heart of this contest. Alexei Alipov missed just one shot out of 125 and finished first. Burnett needed to close the qualifying round as he had started, with a perfect set.
The sky fell in after he missed the 10th target.
"I got such a shock when I missed that one, I couldn't believe it. I was shooting well so I wasn't expecting it and I think that caused me to miss the second."
The Athlone man stood in the shade, still dressed in the paraphernalia of his sport - a green shooting jacket, goggles, ear muffs, a baseball cap.
"It was a case of so near yet so far, but it wasn't to be," he continued. " The scores here are higher than ever. Like, (compatriot) David Malone won a world cup event in Cairo with the same score as I just got. And I can't even get into the final with it here. I think I can walk away with my head held high though.
"Mental strength is the key to this though. We can all shoot the same. It is about who can hold it together under pressure."
In a parallel universe, Burnett would be working in the secure environs of softwear engineering, but he gave up that conventionality when guns started to get a grip on him. He has travelled the world over the past four years taking part in shooting competitions, funding himself by selling competition guns to like-minded souls.
Aged 33, he has hopes of making it to China for the 2008 Games: in true gunslinging tradition, he will live to fight another day.
