Commonwealth Games

Sparks

Odd that we've not had a thread on this so far, but the shooters in the Commonwealth games which just ended in Melbourne have pulled off a right little PR coup. The English shooters have brought home 19 medals (to English athletics' 18 ); there's a silver in Olympic Trap coming back to N.Ireland; medals are also coming back to Scotland and Wales; and generally there's been good all-round coverage of the shooting sports on BBC and in the press (compared, at least, to their usual level of coverage in the UK) during the course of the events, including front-page coverage in the Times. And two shooters were carrying their nation's flags during the closing ceremonies - England's Mike Gault (now the most-medalled english competitor in the history of the games in any sport); and N.Ireland's David Beattie. Not a bad outcome at all!

Full results are up here.

Sparks

The BBC page on the shooting events is here.

And from here:

Beattie takes silver in shooting
David Beattie won silver in the two-day men's individual trap
David Beattie secured Northern Ireland's second silver medal of the Commonwealth Games in shooting's two-day men's individual trap.

Beattie clinched his medal after a three-way single barrel shoot-off.

The Portadown man, in his first Commonwealth Games, was tied on 138 points with New Zealand's Graeme Ede and India's Manavjit Singh Sandhu.

Ede emerged with the gold but 52-year-old Beattie said he hoped his medal would boost the N Ireland team.

"I had the chance to win gold but one target got me twice, and that's the way it goes.

"Last week in the pairs we didn't go very well as we put ourselves under too much pressure.

"Mervyn Morrison and I won a bronze medal in the Commonwealth Championships at the same venue last year so we felt the pressure a bit, but we got our heads together again," said Beattie, who works as a lorry driver.

Morrison finished 18th in Wednesday's individual event.

Northern Ireland's only other medal of the Games so far was won by the men's triples bowls team on Monday.

Sparks

Not so good news for the fullbore lads up north this time though

No medal for Calvert and Millar

David Calvert (right) and Martin Millar after their 2002 win

Defending champions David Calvert and Martin Millar could only manage sixth place in the full bore rifle pairs event at the Commonwealth Games.

Calvert had been hoping to add to his record Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games medal haul of four golds and three bronzes.

Parag Patel and Glyn Barnett took the the title for England ahead ahead of Australia and Malaysia.

Calvert will hope for better in the individual event later in the games.

David Calvert after winning at Bisley