Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Rally car driver Nasser al-Attiya of Qatar won bronze at the Olympic men’s skeet shooting on Tuesday, in a rare Olympic win for the Gulf state.
Attiya claimed Qatar’s first medal in 12 years when he pipped Valeriy Shomin of Russia in a shootoff. The Citroen World Rally Championship driver qualified for the final with the fourth-best score of 121 out of 125.
The 41-year-old was mobbed by members of the Qatari delegation after his bronze success.
“I feel really fantastic, I have been waiting a long time, five Olympic Games, and I have been two times in the final and in Athens I was in a shootoff for a bronze medal and I lost,” Attiyah said, according to Reuters.
The American shot all 25 clays in the final at an overcast royal artillery barracks in front of a capacity crowd on the outdoor range. It was the second skeet gold of the London Games for the United States after Kim Rhodes took the women’s title.
Attiya, the 2011 Dakar Rally winner and current world rally championship driver, was competing in his fifth Olympics and picked up the tiny Gulf nation’s third bronze medal when Shomin missed with his sixth shot in the decider.
Source ( Al Arabiya)
