6
BEIJING — She was stoic and even cheerful at first, cracking jokes and making fun of herself, but for just a minute or so, the enormity of her hurt revealed itself in her eyes, which filled with tears.
"I just, you know I really, I just wanted that medal so badly," Susan Nattrass said. "I feel — even though my brother says I haven't — I feel like I've let people down."
If she didn't know how to use a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun — the weapon in too many Hollywood action movies to count and the apparatus in her preposterously tame-named sport of trap shooting — with such terrifying efficiency, I swear I would have given her a sharp one upside the head. This woman need never apologize to anyone for anything, let alone a bad round on the range.
For almost 40 years, Nattrass has represented Canada internationally with great distinction.
At 57, still at the top of her game after decades of dominance, she is a multiple world champion, an outright pioneer (she was the first woman to shoot traps at an Olympics, back in 1976) and the voice who single-mindedly fought to get the women's version of single trap shooting reinstated in 2000 after it had been booted out of the Games for the previous five years.
Unbelievably, during all that time, she has mostly paid for the privilege.
This year, unusually, she received a grant from the Own the Podium program — this just added to her disappointment at failing to qualify for the final because, with Canada for the first time paying Olympic medalists (respectively $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000), she intended to pay it back if she won — and it helped.
But typically, it costs her about $35,000 annually — "I only go year by year," she said with her bawdy laugh, "otherwise I could get quite depressed" — to represent the country abroad.
Has it been worth it?
"You betcha," she said. "It has been."
Her younger brother, Gary, is here with her, subbing for Nattrass's regular long-time coach, their mom Marie, who at 88 had to sit out this trip, with its 12-hour flights, and is back home in Gibsons, B.C. While all three Nattrass children shot as youngsters — their dad, Floyd, competed in two world championships and the 1964 Olympics — Brian quit sooner, so she and Gary shot together all the time. He has been out of the sport for years now.
"But he said yesterday that he can see why I've stayed in it so long — the camaraderie. We make friends with these people. I see them so much. Two of the people I competed with, I got to meet their kids, and they're now 19 and 22, and they got to meet my niece Sarah, now 19. There's a lot of caring that goes on amongst us."
All of this is part of why she's still doing it. That, and she loves the sport. "I couldn't say that when I started," she said. "I love the challenge of it, I love the feeling when everything goes well. And absolutely the worst feeling in the world is when it all falls apart, like my last round."
After the first two rounds, Nattrass was still in the hunt. She did the usual routine she does on the breaks — played gin rummy with Gary, beat him, got a bit of a massage on her neck and shoulders — and went back to the range, still believing she'd make the final six.
"I think I hit the first bird [clay pigeon], missed the second one.
"I thought, 'Fine, I did that before.' I did this calming technique I use and all that, and you know what, it just didn't work. I sort of never really got into a good rhythm.
"You know, when you miss a few, and the thing is I've been in this sport so long I knew — you miss two, and you'll probably still be in the final. Three. Then I missed my fourth, I thought 'Fine, just hang in there,' and I missed the fifth and after that, I think it's an internal panic that happens inside and you don't really feel it up here [in your head] but in here [your gut].
"It's a sort of panic and you think, 'Oh shit, am I ever going to hit another bird?"
A little later, she thought she had it more precisely figured out.
"I think it's the eyes," she said. "Now that it's been, how long, after I've done it, I think that's what happened. … I keep forgetting to keep my eyes calm, and then my body tries to catch up."
She isn't — big surprise — ready to call it a day yet.
"Everyone asks me when I'm retiring," she said. "Constantly.
"But, I take it year by year and I want to shoot 2009 because then I will have competed for Canada at the world level for 40 years. It's pretty cool." The 2012 Olympics are "too far away" for her to say, or even know.
"I didn't think I'd be at this Olympics. … Now, my teammates, and my brother, sort of, think I might be around, but who knows? It's hard because unlike the young pups, I have a job, and have to work for a time." She's a medical researcher, at a clinic in Seattle where she lives now and studies osteoporosis and menopause, when she isn't with her mom in British Columbia. "I always joke that I'm always glad Ian Millar [the equestrian] is on the team, because he's four years older," she said. "And Ian was 57 when he decided to come to these Games. So who knows?
As for the other Miller — David, the Toronto mayor who heads the council that recently gave the boot to two shooting ranges on municipal property in a moronic attempt to crack down on street crime by going after sport shooters — I was kind of hoping she'd volunteer to show up one day, trusty shotgun at her side, and maybe scare some sense into him.
Nattrass did nothing of the sort, contenting herself with pointing out the stupidity of the move, which is why it's just as well she's the one with the gun.
"I guess I'll be like [former skater] Kurt Browning and win all these world championships and never win an Olympic medal," she said.
But she wants it, though she has nothing else left to prove.
"It's hard," she said. "It takes a lot out of you when you shoot a bad round," and here she thumped her chest, where that huge heart beats.
