Wow, what a day!

The final day of the individual even served up some really tough wind conditions which showed what fullbore shooting is all about.

Lovely sunny day today at Barry Buddon.

The wind conditions seemed easier than yesterday with fewer changes. As a result the scores were very high.  Unfortunately I dropped 1 point at each range to finish with 147.15.  That's not a terrible score by any means (particularly on the tight ICFRA targets), but it wasn't good enough.  I'm now four points off.

This morning we started the individual.  It's a Queen's I (for the non-shooters reading this, that's 7 shots at 300, 500 and 600 metres).

The weather changed today.  The wind was from the south west which keeps the haar away from the range.  However, it also brought the odd shower although we ended up missing the worst of them.

The wind, from over our right shoulder, was actually very tricky at times.  There were some very fast changes in angle and strength.  They weren't big changes but certainly enough to take you out of the bullseye.

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 started the pairs match today but before that we had the bad news that our manager has also gone down with illness.

We had a decent start at 300m dropping just one point.  We both had good groups. From previous Games experience I know that the first shoot can be very hard - nerves can come from anywhere.  It was therefore really encouraging to come through that well.

First an update on Peter.  He is still pretty unwell but does seem to have turned the corner and, apart from not fancying a pint, is much more himself.  He only managed to shoot one range, at 1000 yards, but it was good to see him back in action.  He obviously hasn't had the ideal preparation but we will give it our best effort in the pairs match tomorrow.

Second, the answer to the question many of you might be asking - did the angle grinder help?

The opening ceremony last night was, as my son Rory would say, EPIC!! Walking into the stadium to an enormous wall of noise is an amazing experience. As athletes we spend a lot of the time waiting outside, queuing to go in. We, the shooters, also left a bit early so we could catch our coach back to Carnoustie. I'm therefore looking forward to watching it all on TV to see what we missed!! We got back at 2am but had a fairly late start this morning and it was well worth the effort to get there. Last day if training today before we start the pairs match tomorrow.