Dream falls apart for shooting star Burnett

IT HAD that wet, sticky feeling of an Irish summer in the Chinese capital yesterday, but Derek Burnett must never have felt as far from home in all his life.

Though Olympic chiefs had learned to talk down hopes of a medal, the Longford man was the one name being whispered in the shadows as a possible podium resident on August 10.

The experience of Sydney and Athens, consistent good form, along with the experience of his backup team of Dr Peter Terry and Kevin Kilty were all pointers towards something special in these trap shooting finals.

But Burnett just didn’t hit the spot. He struck 110 out of the 125 targets he aimed at over two days and five rounds — 10 shots outside his stated pre tournament goal — and was left in the relegation wilderness of the 35-strong league table of competitors.

For a man whose sport is as much about mental control as Wild Bill Hickock marksmanship, Burnett was a broken man in the aftermath.

“I am devastated,” he admitted, fighting back tears that eventually won the battle. “I don’t have any real excuses. I just never got the feel of the place. I don’t know; it kept biting me, one round after the next.”

His final round tally of 19 was especially painful but indicative of the pressures exerted on characters who in practice can shoot faultless rounds time and again.

“You spend so long trying to qualify and it’s so difficult to qualify, and I had a good year up to this. It’s totally devastating,” Burnett reflected.

David Kostelecky of the Czech Republic, who missed just four clays in qualifying, won gold from Italy’s Giovanni Pellielo, with favourite Alexey Alipov of Russia third.

Shooting team manager Kevin Kilty, one of the highest ranked coaches in the world, watched helplessly throughout. He too struggled to make sense of the previous 48 hours and how a man that had quit his job and undertaken state-of-the-art medical testing to improve his brain functions when shooting, hadn’t produced on this biggest stage.

“Failure is not the right word. This range here has to be the hardest range I have ever come across. Derek joins a long list of top class shooters who could not get to grips with this place. Derek came in here with the best form he has shown in years and the range just wouldn’t work for him. This place is a puzzle. Certain shooters managed to figure this range out but Derek, and us, his support crew, couldn’t unlock its secrets. There are a lot of people washed up against the shore here. I feel sorry for them but I feel particularly sorry for Derek because he put the hardest effort of any shooter here.

“It was just fighting him back the whole way through.”

Kilty sifted through the weekend in an effort to decipher the turning points.

“In shooting, you really have to find the pick up point for that target. You need to look into the field to see the target but that pickup point was not working for every target. Derek would go fine for about 10 targets and then one would come out completely in the wrong location from where he was looking and that sort of thing catches you by surprise. They were the sort or problems we have been having here and every single day there has been different conditions.

“On Sunday there was heavy rain, with a mist sitting across the whole range while Saturday we had tremendous heat and humidity that was causing the perspiration to run directly into his eyes. There was nothing consistent there for us. It is a terrible thing to say but the luck was not with us out there. And I think everybody needs a little bit of luck in sport. That little rub of the green was simply not with us.”

He continued: “Derek is a tremendous sportsman. And he embodies for me a great sense of belonging here. He deserves to be at this final. His performances over the last three years would have had him a final here. The scoring at this competition is not reflective of Derek’s capabilities and I feel sorry those scores will be a blot on his record because he does not deserve that.

“He is not a quitter. You cannot give up in this sport. This sport kicks you more times than it rewards you. We get used to that kicking but we don’t like to receive it in a place like this.

“We will bounce back. Derek will bounce back.”

With that, then, a tearful Burnett turned away and walked to a quiet corner, to escape not just the enquiring reporters but the relentless sheets of rain.