Scott needs help with Olympic dream

The Battle shooter has had his funding taken away and as a consequence is struggling to finance his quest to qualify for London 2012.

Scott said: “We got told there’s a Selection Shoot at Southern Counties (Shooting Ground in Dorset) this weekend which is 200 miles away.

“There’s a European Championships spot on it and if I perform well, I get to go to the Europeans. But I haven’t got the funds to actually go there. It’s not exactly the best frame of mind to go shooting in.”

The 27-year-old is not among the revised list of athletes on the Lottery-funded World Class Performance Programme 2012 run by British Shooting.

“I didn’t perform the best, I didn’t perform the worst,” continued Scott. “I set a new British record last year, but for some reason they didn’t think that was good enough.”

Scott, who finished 12th in the double trap discipline at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, estimates his trip to the United States for the ISSF World Cup in Tuscon last week cost him “about £2,000 that I haven’t got”.

He is pleased to have been selected for the ISSF World Cup in London on April 23 and he is also on the London 2012 shortlist. The full team selection will be made on Wednesday May 2.

Two Olympic places have been allocated to British shooters in the double trap. Scott thinks that he will be vying with Stevan Walton - with whom he won the Commonwealth Games pairs title in 2010 - for the reserve spot.

Any individuals or businesses willing to lend Scott a hand should email [email protected]. See tomorrow’s Battle Observer for the full article.