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Cyprus Olympic skeet shooter Antonis Nikolaidis narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics on Saturday, when he lost in a final shootout to the Frenchman Anthony Terras. Both competitors finished with a score of 144 points, just behind the gold and silver contenders who both scored 145, setting a new Olympic record.

The bronze medal shootout saw the French holding the medal on the podium, and the Cyprus duo of Nikolaidis and reigning world champion Georgios Achilleos in fourth and fifth place respectively.

The winner of the  men’s skeet gold medal was 19 year old Vincent Hancock from the USA. Hancock won the world championships in his first year on the circuit aged just 16, and won in another nail-biting tiebreaker with Tore Brovold from Norway.

Women’s skeet shooter Andri Eleftheriou also missed out on medal glory, but secured a highly respectable seventh place in her final. Athletes Anna Fitidou (pole vault) and Alissa Kallinikou (400 metres) did not qualify for their next rounds.

Cyprus has yet to secure a medal in the Beijing Games, and a pragmatic President Christofias is obviously looking ahead to possible future glory as he returned from Beijing. He sent telegrams of congratulations to Cypriot footballs team Anorthosis, who are just one game away from qualifying for the UEFA Champions league.

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The Cyprus Olympic team for the forthcoming Beijing games will be led by skeet shooter Georgios Achilleos. Achilleos is the world champion at the sport, and is the island’s best medal hope. Marcos Baghdatis, a finalist in the 2006 Australian Open of the same sport, is also on the team. Cyprus has a good record in the sport; the Junior Men’s Team recently set a new world record of 356, achieved in Cyprus on July 9, 2008 at the European Championships.

Skeet shooting is one of three types of competitive shotgun shooting sports, the others being trap shooting and sporting clays (or clay pigeons). Competitors shoot at clay disks hurled into the air at various angles within a field of 180 degrees. In Olympic skeet shooting, the clay discs are 100mm in diameter, smaller than the average dinner plate, and just 25 mm thick. Hitting them takes a great deal of skill, timing and mental awareness, not to mention accuracy with a double-barreled shotgun or similar.

International skeet shooting has been an Olympic sport since 1968. Such is the popularity of the sport in Cyprus that there are five shooting clubs, including the Nicosia club with its Olympic shooting range. If you would like to shoot while on your holiday in Cyprus, you can discover more at the Cyprus Shooting Sport Federation website at cssf-shooting.org.

And finally… When the sport was first invented back in 1915, it was known as clock shooting. The original USA course involved traps that shot across a complete circle, but this had to stop when a chicken farm was set up next door to the original range…

Photo of skeet shooting by maverick2003 at flickr.com

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