SHOOTING REPORT

Briton peels off unexpected silver

The Olympics may be dominated by sportsmen and women training full-time but there is still room for good old-fashioned amateur success. Ian Peel, who works a 45 to 50-hour week in the textile business, trains only at weekends and receives no lottery sports funding, won Great Britain’s second medal of the Games today with silver in the men’s trap behind Michael Diamond of Australia.

Diamond, the defending champion, shot 147, only three short of a perfect 150. Peel, 42, from Blackburn, won a close contest with Giovanni Pellielo, from Italy, for second place, to become the first Briton for 32 years to win a medal in the discipline. The last was Bob Braithwaite, another Lancastrian, from Preston, who took gold in Mexico City, having taken up shooting clays because he felt guilty aiming at birds and animals.

Like the cyclist Jason Queally, who secured Britain’s first medal, a gold in the one-kilometre time trial on Saturday, Peel’s success was not widely predicted. However, Peel said: "It was not totally unexpected from my point of view. I thought I had an outside chance of a medal, but I was expected to finish in the top 10.

"Silver is brilliant, a great feeling, and I am relieved that my last-moment lapse in concentration did not cost me. I missed one late on, so the pressure was on, but I hit all the rest from then on and pulled through." Peel scored 142, Pellielo 140. The final was not as tense for Peel as it might have been because David Kostelecky, from the Czech Republic, missed a shot early. "That helped me," Peel said.

Peel is one of some 20 members of the Great Britain Olympic team of 320 who receive no National Lottery funding because shooting has not been accepted on to the programme. He is the first member of the Great Britain shooting team to step onto the podium in three Olympics. Malcolm Cooper and Alister Allan won the gold and silver medals in small bore rifle in 1988. Allan is now a coach with the British team.

Sydney is Peel’s second Olympics, having failed to make the top eight in his previous appearance, in Seoul in 1988. He started shooting in 1975, becoming Commonwealth Games champion in 1986 and European champion 10 years later. In a lean spell in between, he failed to make the team for the 1992 and 1996 Olympics.

"I did not shoot well between 1990 and 1994 but, since then, I have picked up," Peel said. "In 1996 I was close to going to the Olympics, but not close enough." With no clear explanation for his improvement, he thought it might be the work he has put in on mental preparation and breathing techniques.

Peel visualises his target before taking his shot. "I focus on one at a time and I do not allow the overall picture to affect me," he said. This is his second success in Sydney this year, having won a World Cup competition here.

The assistant production director for a textitle colouring company and a family man with two young children, Peel is too busy to practise his sport from Mondays to Fridays. "I do not train at all during the week," he said. "I would like to but I have got to fit it in with work and the family. I train Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons." Only a modest level of fitness was required for his sport, he said. "You need some physical fitness, because sometimes you have to perform in hot conditions, but you do not have to be superfit."

Diamond, 28, said that the conditions were among the most difficult he had experienced, with parched, treeless paddocks rather than verdant scenery.

"The light seemed to be ducking in and out all of the time," Diamond said. "They were very difficult conditions." The Australian enjoyed a loud chorus of support, with several coach parties from Goulburn, his home town, having travelled in to watch him.

The Olympic trap discipline is based on the use of clay saucers, 18.5cm in diameter, fired into the air one at a time at various angles. The competitor is allowed two shots at each with a .12 gauge shotgun. After 125 targets, the top six advance to the final.

The Times