William Chetcuti ranks ninth but fails to make final six [SLIDESHOW]

All photos by Paul Zammit Cutajar.

27-year-old William Chetcuti missed out on a position in the London 2012 double trap finals at the Royal Artillery Barracks, when he failed to make the last six with 135 clays out of 150.

Registering an overall average of 0.9 clays shot, the Manikata-born shooter ranked ninth out of 23 shooters.

Chetcuti hit 43 clays in the first round, which started this morning at 10:30am CET, and then improved his performance in the second round with 47 clays out of 50.

At the end of the second round, Chetcuti placed tenth in what was a positive performance. He improved his ranking by one place when he shot 45 clays.

"I could have done better, but I did train a lot this year and did my best. Today was not my day," Chetcuti told TVM in a brief interview afterwards.

The first six were the Briton Peter Wilson (143), Russian Vasily Mosin (140), Kuwaiti fehaid Aldeehani (140), Vitaly Fokeev of Russia (139), Sweden's Hakan Dahlby (137) and Hungary's Richard Bognar (137).

William Chetcuti was competing with another 23 shooters in the double trap competition, divided in four groups with Chetcuti shooting in the group with Italian Francesco D'Aniello, British Peter Robert Russell Wilson, Hungarian Richard Bognar, Russian Vasily Mosin, and Croatian Anton Glasnovic.

All shooters had three rounds of 50 clays each, in the first phase for a maximum score of 150 clays. William Chetcuti occupies 4th place in the ISSF Double Trap World rankings

The final barrage will start at 4pm local time.

For Chetcuti this was his third participation at the Games and in London after placing ninth in 2004 and eighth four years ago.

In 2004, Chetcuti had finished level with Hu Binyuan (China), Daniele Di Spigno (Italy), Fehaid Aldeehani (Kuwait) and Vitaly Fokeev (Russia) on 134 but it was Hu who managed to clinch a position in the final after a shoot-off.

Then in 2008 Chetcuti lost out in another tie for sixth place on 136 points with Ahmed Almaktoum (UAE), Roland Gerebics (Hungary) and Russel Mark (Australia).

Chetcuti's eighth place was the best all-time position for a Maltese sportsman at the Olympics.

1	WILSON Peter Robert Russell	48	48	47	0.953 average	143		Qual.
2	MOSIN Vasily	48	45	47	0.933	140		Q
3	ALDEEHANI Fehaid	47	47	46	0.933	140		Q
4	FOKEEV Vitaly	44	48	47	0.927	139		Q
5	DAHLBY Hakan	45	46	46	0.913	137		Q
6	BOGNAR Richard	44	49	44	0.913	137		Q
7	AL-ATHBA Rashid	43	46	47	0.907	136
8	D ANIELLO Francesco	48	44	44	0.907	136
9	CHETCUTI William	43	47	45	0.900	135
10	LI Jun	40	47	47	0.893	134
11	SODHI Ronjan	48	44	42	0.893	134
12	FAULDS Richard	39	46	48	0.887	133
13	ALMAKTOUM Juma	42	45	46	0.887	133
14	HU Binyuan	42	48	43	0.887	133
15	DAVIS Alistair	43	43	46	0.880	132
16	RICHMOND Joshua	44	42	45	0.873	131
17	FUZARO Filipe	44	44	43	0.873	131
18	di SPIGNO Daniele	43	46	42	0.873	131
19	AL HATMI Ahmed	37	46	46	0.860	129
20	MARK Russell	43	41	44	0.853	128
21	TORRES LABOY Jose	41	43	43	0.847	127
22	ELLER Walton	41	43	42	0.840	126
23	GLASNOVIC Anton	38	34	42	0.760	114