[ad_1]
By by the time the last member of the Japanese Olympic team enters the stadium at the end of Friday’s opening procession, Seonaid McIntosh – pronounced “show-ner” – will have set her alarm for a 5 o’clock start. morning to catch the first Village bus on Saturday morning, hoping to return as the first Tokyo Games gold medalist.
McIntosh, 25, is the most successful British rifle shooter of all time and will compete in both the 10m air rifle – which starts Saturday at 8am local time – and the 50m three-position rifle (kneeling, lying and standing) the following weekend, the event in which she became the first British woman to win a gold medal at the annual World Championships in 2019.
McIntosh was born into shooting as the daughter of Shirley, a 1994 Commonwealth Games gold medalist, and Donald, who also represented Scotland at the Commonwealth Games eight years later. She is also following in the footsteps of her older sister Jennifer, winner of two Commonwealth gold medals for Scotland in 2010, in a sport where the margin between gold and silver is often measured in fractions of a millimeter.
In addition to the mental pressure that comes with knowing that a stray shot in the qualifying round could mean a premature exit, the shot also places surprising physical demands on competitors, given that one of the primary requirements is to stay as still as possible.
“Physically you need to be fit enough to cope with a heavy training load,” says Donald, who is also his daughter’s trainer, “in positions that put a lot of pressure on various parts of the body, including particularly but not exclusively the back, neck and shoulders, and in very asymmetrical positions.
“Muscle fatigue and tremors, so we try to use the skeletal system as much as possible to support the gun. The rifle aiming point is always moving, even for real elite athletes, and we spend a lot of time working on reducing both the size and speed of that movement.
“There is also a huge psychological component, and the ability to impart the skills developed during training effectively and consistently under pressure is absolutely essential. There is a lot of time to think between shots, and managing the thoughts and emotions in competition is what really separates the top shooters from the rest of the field.
Sign up for our Tokyo 2020 briefing with all the news, views and previews from the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
There is no telescopic sight or reticle on McIntosh’s rifle, and to score a 10 with a single shot in the 10m event, it will need to hit a target 0.5mm wide. The target, however, is also divided into decimal places, with the top score of 10.9 awarded only for a perfectly central shot.
“Every decimal point counts,” says Donald. “You can be eliminated with only 0.1 point difference, 0.25mm on a target 10m away.
“You can’t see any of these scoring rings, in fact they only exist in the computer that processes the signal generated by the pellet passing through the electronic target. All you can see through the sights is the circular drop on the black part of the target. “
Source link
