Seonaid McIntosh confessed that she struggled with fatigue in the heat after her shot at becoming the first British medallist at Tokyo fell short when she missed out on reaching the final of the 10m air rifle.
On the brink of making the top eight in qualifying to advance, the 25-year-old ended with her wildest round out of six with the Scot spraying he worst score of 9.3 on her very last shot when her best would have seen her through.
A chance at a small slice of history lost. It left her in 12th place at the Asaka Range on a total of 672.2, agonisingly a mere 1.5 points below the cut – with China's Yang Qian later claiming the initial gold of the Games with an Olympic record mark.
“I knew I was close-ish,” McIntosh admitted. “But I didn't know which side of the thing I was on. I just tried to focus on finding good shots and finishing the performance well. I didn't quite manage that, but I am really happy with the rest of the performance. I am really happy with how I shot, so there’s not too much to complain about."
The 2018 rifle world champion had played down expectations beforehand. Her strongest suit was always due to arrive in next weekend’s 50m rifle 3 positions event. But with hair dyed royal blue for the occasion, the emotions veered from black to white and everything in between.
"It was a bit up and down,” she said. “I was really nervous to start with and then the nerves went down, and then I was really tired. I kind of went down again at the very end. I was really nervous for the last few shots. I was trying to keep it together, I guess."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel