Perfection is ultimate target for Baldwin

Al Pacino may have embedded the importance of inches into the sporting psyche with that famous, and overblown, speech in the film Any Given Sunday but Sean Baldwin must scoff at such generous measurements of length.

When the 44-year old company quartermaster sergeant raises his rifle for the 10m air rifle standing event at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich some time after 9am today he will do so in the knowledge that the margin for error is infinitesimal.

“I went to my first [Paralympic] competition last year in Spain and got my qualification for London there,” he explains. “Out of 600, I shot a 598 and I didn’t make the final. And I missed the 10 by a quarter of a millimetre. Twice. That’s how fine it was.