NATHAN HALES fired a golden shot while copping an earful from his girlfriend.
Hales’ partner Charlotte Kerwood, who shot for Team GB at Beijing and London, was in the crowd at Chateauroux, 170 miles south of Paris.
And despite sweltering 35C temperatures, nerveless Nathan kept his cool to produce a trap shooting masterclass.
The southpaw shooter, from Chatham, Kent, had a perfect score of 50 to complete the qualifying rounds and earn his place in the six-man elimination final.
That was the real cue for Charlotte and their two kids to bellow their support, especially while his rivals were dropping out of the race for the medals and the field was whittled down to just the Brit and Chinese Qi Ying.
Hales, 28, said: “I could hear Charlotte all the time.
“The whole way through we’ve been talking about thoughts and feelings when you are competing and things you might or might not hear from the crowd.
“So the whole experience really, she’s been able to run through it with me which has been a great help.
“I had loads of my family here — my mum and dad as well as Charlotte and the two kids, cousins, friends, aunties and uncles. So it was great to have them all there.”
Kerwood, 37, is a four-time Commonwealth champion who represented Great Britain at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
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Like Hales, she also competes in trap shooting so was more than able to give vital advice from the stands.
The couple have two children, Hudson and Hattie.
While his rivals faltered under the pressure, Hales was the embodiment of precision as he took aim at the 11cm discs being fired at 40mph some 15 metres in front of him.
Hales only missed one of the first 25 shots before the finalists started being withdrawn.
When Sweden’s Rickard Levin-Andersson was eliminated, Hales was three shots clear with 15 to go.
By the final ten-shot test against Qi, the Brit was three ahead.
If there was any tension, he did not show it, hitting all ten of his remaining targets to set a new Olympic record of 48 — just one shy of his own world record — to win by four.
Incredibly, he had missed just FOUR shots in the whole competition.
Hales, Britain’s first shooting gold medal winner since Peter Wilson in 2012, said: “As it went on I started to think I could be on for it.
“I knew I had a couple of targets as a buffer over Qi, so that was a great comfort.
“But at the same time I tried not to think about that so it didn’t result in any misses that might have let him close the gap.
“It’s a fine line and one that’s easy to fall over.
“I just tried to keep everything as we always do, treat it exactly the same way as we have done when we were shooting the final in training.
“Then it was about making sure I really pushed forward and kept focused on what I was doing, not on what others were doing.
“There were a lot of nervy moments, a lot of pressure but I really enjoyed the whole thing.”
