Olympics: Al Attiyah qualifies for skeet final with super show

Champion shooter Nasser Al Attiyah did Qatar proud on Tuesday by moving within a whisker of a dream medal with a fine performance to qualify for the final showdown in the skeet shooting event of the London Olympics at the Royal Artillery Barracks. Al Attiyah qualified for the final session despite missing three shots today. The marksman who is also a professional rally driver, riding on a perfect opening round score Monday, today finished fourth behind the USA’s Vincent Hancock, Denmark’s Anders Golding and Valeriy Shomin of Russia. In an highly competitive skeet shooting event where the difference between winning and losing a medal is as small a fraction as 0.01 of a point, Al Attiyah did remarkably well to finish fourth among 36 competitors. Today the Qatari had perfect scores of 25 in the first and the vital fifth rounds. He missed two in the second round to finish with 23 points and returned with 24 each in the third and fourth rounds to average 0.968 and finish with a total score of 121 the same as Russian Shomin. American Hancock is at the top with 123 while Denmark’s Golding has 122 points. Unfortunately, Al Attiyah’s fellow GCC colleague and medal hopeful Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum missed out on a place. The UAE flag-bearer finished 13th overall with a score of 118, falling short of the total needed to break into the top six. Kuwait’s Abdulla Al Rashidi finished in 21th place, after dropping five shots during his two rounds today.