End of the pairs

Sorry that there was no blog entry yesterday.  It was a long day because of delays and I ran out of time.

We began yesterday by finishing the first stage of the pairs event at 600 yards.  Peter and I dropped another 3 points which was not good enough to haul us up the leaderboard.

We then had another long delay because of - you guessed it - the haar.  However it did eventually clear and we shot 900 yards.  We dropped 5 points there.  The leading teams shot on the second detail and the scores were quite mixed.

We were also on first detail at 1000 yards which was a shame because the heavens opened.  Enormous rain drops and lots of them!!  The conditions were quite steady but there were some changes and with no mirage and sodden flags hanging down the poles there was very little to go on other than fall of shot on other targets and the angle of the rain!  At one point I wound off two minutes of wind whilst coaching Peter based on not much more than a hunch and I was right!  Holding a good elevation was just as much of a problem and all teams suffered.  We ended up with a 69 and a 67.

The second detail managed to stay dry.  England (no points dropped prior to 1000 yards) dropped 5 points but that ended up being enough for gold.  Australia sadly fell out of the medals after a crossfire.  The target numbers are very small and are almost impossible to read at long range so cross-firing is a real hazard.  Canada won silver and Scotland got the bronze.  We ended up 11th.  Certainly disappointing but our build up was less than ideal.  The scores, and breakdowns for each team, are on the CG website.