Harlow marksman wins Team England’s first gold medal
14th October 2008James Huckle from Harlow won the first gold for Team England at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune, India today (Tuesday) after a nail-biting finale to the men’s 50m-rifle prone event.
The 18-year-old qualified for the final in first position with a score of 585 and held a two-point lead over his nearest rival, Matthew Hall from Northern Ireland.
However, it was Matthew who started better in the final, where each shot was scored to the nearest decimal point, and after six of the ten shots the lead was reduced to 0.8.
A 10.7 on his seventh shot regained some of the advantage and James held his nerve on the final three shots to finish 1.1 points ahead of his rival.
“I’m really happy to have won,” said James afterwards. “I definitely focused more in the final because each shot is so important and you only have 45 seconds. There was a lot of pressure but I think you can only put pressure on yourself and so I just tried to stay calm.
“I never try to work out everyone else’s scores during the final but I knew that Matthew was catching up and it was close. But I could only focus on what I was doing and when I scored 10.1 with my last shot I knew I’d done it.”
A former county level tennis player, James admits that he “really enjoys the mental aspect of shooting”. He has another medal chance tomorrow (Wednesday) in the 50m rifle three positions, an event in which he is the current senior British champion.
Team England has an 80-strong team competing at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games, which run from 12th to 18th October. Team England has athletes competing in all nine sports at the Games – athletics, badminton, boxing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.
Team England finished first in the overall medals table at the first Commonwealth Youth Games, held in Edinburgh in 2000 with 36 golds, 41 silvers and 18 bronzes; and second at the 2004 Games in Bendigo, Australia, with 41 golds, 31 silvers and 29 bronzes.