Shooting: NZ women win gold in double trap

New Zealand trapshooters Teresa Borrell and Nadine Stanton have bounced back from a disappointing first day to win a gold medal in the women's double trap pairs at the Commonwealth Games last night.

Borrell and Stanton were fifth and last on Saturday in the trap pairs at the Bisley shooting range south of London.

But Stanton, a relative novice in international shooting, was in her element in the double trap and her brilliant second round score of 39 out of 40 targets lifted the Kiwi pair from the bronze medal position at the halfway stage to the gold medal.

Stanton said it was nerve-wracking when sitting evenly with the other teams after the first round.

"But we were determined to do well in the second round," she said.

"That 39 was my best score for an individual round at an international level so I pulled out all the stops for that one."

Stanton said she found the double trap easier because shooters knew where the two clay targets were heading. She decided to specialise in double trap two years ago and had not been practising the trap event leading up to the Commonwealth Games.

"My individual match is on Thursday and I plan to repeat the performance," she said.

The medal is New Zealand's first of any colour at these Games.

The New Zealand pair shot 137 of the 160 targets, one better than Canada, with the Australian pair third on 131.

Stanton's personal tally was 72 and Borrell's 65. At the halfway stage their scores were 33 and 32 respectively.

"What bumped them up from third to first was Nadine shooting 39 out of 40 in the second round," New Zealand shooting team manager David Rew said from Bisley.

"This is Nadine's specialist discipline. This is the one we had more hope for because she shoots double trap very well and Teresa shoots it fairly well, which was a different situation to what we had in the trap yesterday.

In the double trap, two clay targets are thrown simultaneously from three traps in a trench.

Stanton, a 26-year-old laboratory technician from New Plymouth, has only been on the international shooting scene for a couple of years, but she and Borrell combined for a silver medal in the trap pairs at the Commonwealth shooting championships last year on the Bisley range.

Borrell is a successful sailor from Auckland, having finished sixth in the women's event in world match racing and was a member of a crew that won the women's section of the Sydney to Hobart race.

She won a bronze medal at the 1999 Commonwealth shooting championships.

- NZPA

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

Commonwealth Games info and related links