Retiring shooter Dan Repacholi has claimed the Hunter’s second gold medal of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games after taking out the men’s 50 metre pistol event on Wednesday.
The 35-year-old, with his wife Alex and two daughters in the stands at the Belmont Shooting Centre, finished 6.7 points ahead of his nearest rival Bangladesh’s Shakil Ahmed (220.5). India’s Om Mitharval (201.1) was third.
“It’s amazing,” he told Channel 7 straight after the victory. “To win gold in front of my beautiful wife, my two beautiful kids and all our family it’s fantastic.”
Repacholi said the result could have been different without the home-crowd support.
“Definitely [you get something from them],” he said. “It was great, they were behind me the whole way. I don’t know if the same result would have happened if they weren’t here or if it was in another country.”
Earlier this week Repacholi was fourth in the final of the 10m air pistol, which he won in Glasgow in 2014, but bounced back for the longer-distance decider, “I continued to build and build and build throughout the final and just got better as it went,” he said. “That’s what you need to do in a final, unfortunately I didn’t get to do that in the last event two days ago but this time I have so it’s fantastic.”
The four-time Olympian now has six medals, featuring three gold, from four Commonwealth Games appearances starting in Melbourne 12 years ago.
Before the event he announced this would be his last international shoot.
Original article by Josh Callinan can be found here.
