Ok, after a 36 hour trip and 3 days of practice, the IPC World Championships kicked off for me this morning. Practice went very well and things were looking good but the only problem was i think i was too laid back, i mean i felt no nerves at all which is pretty unusual for me. I usually have a touch of the butterflies at the start of every round i shoot but this morning there were none, nada, zero, zipp!!!
Unfortunately it appears that these nerves are quite an important part of my shooting as my scores were borderline dismal. I shot the lowest 90m and the lowest 70m scores of the whole season and as a result finished today in
25th position. If i had scored the same as i have been all season long i would be sitting in 2nd or 3rd place this evening, so you can imagine how frustrated i'm feeling right now.
Anyhoo, tommorrow is another day as they say (whoever "they" are) and i have the 50m and 30m distances to shoot. 50m being my best distance so i'm hoping to repair some of the damage done today there. I really need to be in the top 15 by the end of tomorrow so i get a bye through to the 2nd round of the elimination matches.
Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for me and i promise i will try to be nervous :)
Till tomorrow....
Elimination day arrived and i felt great, the butterflies were there and i was in a totally different frame of mind. My first match was against Reiner Schmidt of Germany which i won quite comfortably, 2nd up was Kimimasa Onodera of Japan as he was ranked 5th i thought i would have a tougher time of it than i did, It wasn't an easy match by any means but i pipped him by 1 point to go through to the 1/8ths.
Oh Joy!!! a Korean...Yun Young Bea was my next opponant, it would have been a nice scalp to have but i had a couple of flyers in the first end, I beat him in the second end but by then the damage had already been done. So thats where my run stopped, To be beaten by a Korean in Korea isn't something to be ashamed of and i am really quite pleased with my performance when it really mattered.
