CI’s best ever tag small joy for Mace

Friday 25th July 2008, 2:30PM BST.

THE agony of it. Countback cost Nick Mace (pictured) a place in shooting’s history books in hot and sweaty Surrey yesterday and the pain was etched on the Guernseyman’s face.

The three leading contenders for the Bisley Grand Aggregate – Mace, David Calvert and Nigel Ball – all finished with exactly the same score after the final competition, the Prince of Wales at 600 yards.

But by virtue of central V-bullseyes scored over six days of shooting, the Sarnian was pushed into second place behind Ball, but ahead of Calvert, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist.

In more than a hundred years of island shooting at Bisley, no Channel Island shot has ever achieved such high ranking in the Grand Aggregate. So while bitterly disappointed to miss out, the name Nick Mace is now writ large in the annals of Bisley Common.