After a dozen or so attempts the timing becomes instinctive. It seems crass to ask someone to take score but I am fairly sure I nail six consecutive discs at one point. “Do you want to take my place on the Olympic team?” asks Lucy. We move on to a more challenging side-to-side flightpath where the shooter tracks the movement of the target with their gun and aims for the bottom corner. This largely eludes me. I manage to hit a few but with Lucy saying “now” at trigger-pulling time, which does not traditionally happen at the Olympics.
Olympic trap, Lucy’s discipline in Paris, ups the target speed to frightening levels. Competitors shoot five rounds of 25 across two days, 125 in total, and Lucy says she will need a score of 120 to reach the final. That is missing one target out of 25 in each round.
Based on my stunning performance on the range (on the easiest bit, with quite a lot of help) how long would it take me to master the far harder trap discipline? “You’re looking at about an eight to 12-year journey,” says Lucy. “There’s so much to learn, and it’s supposed to be hard.”
She practises three or four times per week for up to three hours per session and is in the gym most days for at least an hour. There is core strength work but cardio too, to get her resting heart rate down as low as possible and prevent spikes when under stress. There is also “distraction training,” when she asks people to shout or kick bins behind her as she shoots or gets her sport psychologist to play loud music. He favours country, she does not.
As with canoeist Clarke, it is a fierce competitiveness which has driven her to the top of the sport, which she started when she was 11. “It’s having the drive to be the best, to see if you can get those marginal gains, and staying calm so you can deal with the stress and high-pressure situations,” she says. She tells me she loved shooting from the very first time she saw a target shatter. It is certainly satisfying, but I am not sure I felt the same buzz. One more try.