Day 20

Today there were two different matches: the Gatineau, an individual shoot at 900m; and the Canada Match as a team of eight over 300, 500 and 600 yards. The Gatineau, unlike the other shoots in the Grand Aggregate, was squadded according to individual performance over the course of the Grand Aggregate. Accordingly, most of the team shot on the 9:34 detail, supposedly one of the more tricky relays, whilst the rest were on earlier. When we arrived, the wind was up and it turned out that the earlier details were the tricky ones with wind brackets of 4 – 8 minutes. There were some valiant scores in these with only one of the team getting less than 70. Unusually, the wind got easier for the later detail with only a one and a half minute wind bracket. This meant that there were many good scores coming off. We should take this opportunity to give particular commendation to certain members of the team. Emma Nuttall, Jon Underwood, Alastair Haley and Ian Shaw all put in perfect scores in the Gatineau, which also placed them all within the top ten of the Grand Aggregate: Jon finished second, leading Emma on V’s in third. Ian Shaw came sixth and Alastair Haley finished eighth. This is no mean feat: Great Britain have dominated the Grand Aggregate leaderboard and have taken 9 of the top twenty places. An excellent result.

This afternoon brought the start of the annual skirmish between Canada and Great Britain: the Canada Match at 300, 500 and 600 yards. This year, four international teams took part: Canada, Great Britain, Japan and the USA. Great Britain featured, in Bruce Winney, Angus McLeod, Jon Ford and Will Broad, four new caps with the youngest just 21 years old. A fine start at 300 yards put Great Britain all in on 400 ex 400, one point ahead of Canada and three points ahead of the USA, with Japan also losing points at this distance. 500 yards once again demonstrated GB’s resolve to retain the Canada Match, with them putting in a strong performance and only dropping a single point (as did the USA and Canada – still just one point behind). At 600 yards, with a few shots remaining from Angus McLeod, GB were leading the Canada match by two points. At close of play, Great Britain finished on a score of 1197.163, beating the USA into second on 1195.166 and Canada into third on 1195.144. This was apparently the third highest Canada match score and the fact that there were three teams with 1195 points or more, in 2-3 minutes of wind, made it a particularly special match. Top score of the team was Will Broad with 150.23, whose coach Bruce Winney had a memorably good match. Two down in the DCRA meeting, two to go…

Once everything had settled down after the match, everyone returned to the hotel for management to finalise the next team (the Commonwealth Match) for the following morning. This is a team of 12 at long range and will be a good warm up for those shooting in the Governor General’s final in the afternoon, and an even better trial for the America Match the next day.

Afterwards, four of the team went to the Macdonald Stewart Dinner at the Chateau Laurier, where the Captain presented to the DCRA on behalf of the team (initially in French, which confused some of the anglophone Canadians) a silver cigar box that had originally been given to Col. Street by the 1925 Canadian Bisley team of which he was Commandant. For the rest, several different dining options were investigated for another quite pre-match night, while ammo wallahs clacked away into the night…