Reward for sure-fire Scott
In damp, cool conditions more akin to his home borough of Lewisham than Brazil, Britain’s Steve Scott won the bronze medal in the double-trap shooting discipline. In a third-place shoot-off with his compatriot Tim Kneale, Scott posted a perfect score of 30, hitting every one of the coloured discs fired two at a time into the grey Rio sky.
As his last shot shattered the clay target, sending out a plume of orange powder, he punched the air, kissed his shotgun then embraced his defeated countryman.
“There was a part of me that felt a bit guilty and I didn’t want to rub it in a team-mate’s face,” said the 31-year-old Londoner. “Although a minute ago he was trying to kick me in the butt as I tried to do an interview, so he’s got over it.”
It was brilliant shooting by Scott. Unfazed by the squalling wind, not worried about the woeful Euro disco music, he posted the only perfect score of the afternoon’s competition.
“I was shooting off for bronze,” Scott said. “Not only that, I’m shooting off against a team-mate, so GB was coming away with a medal whatever happened. Maybe that helped me relax a little.”
Scott and Kneale had qualified for a six-man semi-final through a busy day of nerveless shooting. But there, a couple of missed targets each allowed the Italian Marco Innocenti and the Kuwaiti Fehaid Aldeehani (shooting for the Independent Olympic Team because Kuwait are banned from the Games) to move ahead of the field and fire for gold. Before Aldeehani could become the first independent athlete to win Olympic gold, Scott and Kneale had a shoot-out for bronze. Scott’s nerveless approach was, he said, something he had learned from his coach, Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum, who also coached Peter Wilson to gold at the London Games, and to whom Scott dedicated his medal.
“I was self-taught for the best part of 11 years,” he said of his teenaged years working in a Saturday job at a shooting range in Kent.
“I was a bit cheeky after London – I said to Pete, ‘If you are thinking about retiring, pretty please ask the Sheikh if he will work with me’. Without doubt it was one of the biggest things towards this medal.”