The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Aaron heading for Brisbane with a medal in his sights
Commonwealth Games - Spalding man shoots for gold
A Spalding man is one of the favourites to strike gold Down Under at the Commonwealth Games.
Aaron Heading (30) is in the England shooting team competing at the Games on the Gold Coast in Australia and he’ll be firing in the trap and double trap categories next week.
The double trap is on Wednesday (April 11) at the Belmont Shooting Centre in Brisbane and the single trap on Saturday (April 14).
And the Lincolnshire sharpshooter has a medal very much within his sights.
He’ll be competing in his third Commonwealth Games and on both previous occasions he made the podium.
He won gold (single trap) and bronze (double trap) medals in Delhi in 2010 and a silver (single trap) in Glasgow in 2014.
And he will take aim in the best of form. He has won several events leading up to the Games including the Oceania and Commonwealth Shooting Federation Championships in Brisbane held at the Commonwealth Games venue in November.
He was then a bronze medal winner at the ISSF World Cup in Acapulco, Mexico finishing just behind Spaniards Antonio Bailon and Alberto Fernandez.
Heading is one of 11 out of 20 athletes on the England shooting team who have Commonwealth Games experience, with 21 medals between them.
Heading started shooting when he was 12 years-old and made the GB team in his first competition at that age.
He then spent most of his education and school years travelling the world in competitions for England and Great Britain abroad and he became European junior champion.
He is the only male British shooter to win both the junior and senior World Championship titles in the same year.
When he was 20 he went to live in Italy for two years to train with one of the world’s top coaches Marcello Dradi. ■ Benjamin Eyre, a member of the Hungtindon Gymastics Club, is also at the Games as a member of the Wales gymnastics team.
Eyre (18), from Hemingford Grey, finished second in the Welsh Championships in Cardiff in February.
■ More than 6,600 athletes and officials from across the world will converge on the Gold Coast for the 21st edition of the Commonwealth Games, with 275 events across 19 sports at venues mostly on the Queensland state’s coastal tourist strip.
■ Team England have sent around 600 athletes and staff - their largest ever team to represent the nation in an overseas sporting event.
■ Australia tops the all-time medals standings in the games, with 2,218 overall 210 more than England and 745 more than third-placed Canada.
But England finished top of the table at Glasgow four years ago with 58 gold medals - nine more than Australia.