With a Hello Kitty sticker on her shotgun and another patch on her vest Lin said she is not worried about the age gap between herself and her competitors, or their differing levels of experience.
"A lot of them are older than me. But when it comes to competition it's more a matter of skill than how old an athlete is," she said.
Her coach said that in the double trap, there are really no superior athletes, everyone is about even.
In other words, today as Lin and others zero in on 120 small orange discs flying at unpredictable angles and speeds, it will be the best woman who will win.
Anything is possible though. "In 1996, Kimberly Rhode won the double trap and at the time she was the youngest competitor at 17," Lin said. Rhode, now 21, has been competing since she was 10.
In April this year the young shooter had a chance to train in Australia with her sport idol Michael Diamond. Diamond has already won two consecutive shooting gold medals at the Olympics this year.
After her training stint abroad, Lin shot a perfect 150 at the Taiwan Plum Flower Cup in June, setting a new -- albeit unofficial -- world record. Her record was the equivalent of a 113 in today's competition. In a competition in Sydney earlier this year, Zhang shot a 142 out of 150 targets, while Nakayama shot 144.
Whether Lin's performance in June was an omen remains to be seen as the competition will be a close one, with Zhang, Rhode and Nakayama all competing today, her coach said.
Tseng said that Lin really has so much to gain and so little to lose.
"She can compete in the Olympics until she's 40," Tseng said.
Longevity aside, Lin has set her sights high for Sydney. Following months of nothing but eight hours of practice a day or as she puts it "shooting, eating, playing with my dog and sleep," there is only one goal she has in mind, "a gold medal of course."
RSS