Shooting: Pressure gets to father-son combo

Constant hounding by the media is not being used by Levin's Commonwealth Games father and son shooters as an excuse for finishing sixth in the 50-metre prone pairs in Melbourne on Saturday.

Medal hopefuls Ryan and Grant Taylor ended out of contention after both scoring 586 points.

The attention the pair has been receiving has been a bit of a surprise for the medal hopefuls to the point that Grant says he has no plans to carry on bouncing between journalists.

"There was a hell of a lot of pressure on us to perform with the interest in us," he said.

"I have done seven interviews since I have been here and that hammers you a little bit.

"I found it quite difficult but in saying that, I started off shooting all right and so did Ryan.

"I think we just lost concentration for a short period of time and that's where we ended up. Unfortunately we both had one bad string.

"I shot a 95 in my third string, got up had a rest and finished off really good while Ryan lost six points in his last one.

"I'm pretty sure it was fifth -- I'm only guessing -- once I'm out of the top three I don't really care."

The official placing was sixth and the only word Grant could find to describe their disappointment was "gutted"

Saturday night was spent avoiding as much human contact as possible with the more senior member of the pair shutting everybody out by locking himself in his room.

"I really felt like we let New Zealand down a little bit.

"We were expected to get a medal and we should have. It really was not hard, we just lost the plot with basically 20 shots between us.

"After the match Ryan came over and apologised to me.

"I said you don't have to mate we were together as a team -- it's not necessary.

"Well go on from here and hopefully we can put it behind us and get on with the job we came over here to do."

But a place in the top 10 has given them renewed hope ahead of tomorrow's qualifying rounds for the individual event.

After a relaxing day with wife Liz and friends yesterday it's back to the range today for an official training run ahead of three days of singles competition also in the 50-metre prone.

Qualifying starts tomorrow with the top half going through to Wednesday's rounds.

From there the top eight travel through to a shoot-off on Thursday.

Grant is planning three days without his new friends the media.

"I have been really surprised at the level of interest with us being father and son.

"Ryan had already had enough and told team management no more. I've got one last interview with TV1 tomorrow after training.

"We've got over the disappointment now -- hopefully we can be left to concentrate on what we are doing."

- HOROWHENUA-KAPITI CHRONICLE