No joy for Chetcuti as he finishes 16th in Cairo

Maltese double trap shooter William Chetcuti failed to make his mark when competing in his second ISSF World Cup shoot this year, finishing 16th out of 51 competitors.

Chetcuti, a bronze medal winner at the Commonwealth Games held earlier this year in Melbourne, had set his sights on winning yesterday's shoot in Cairo to gain a direct entry to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

However, Chetcuti's hopes of achieving his target faded away after he missed out on a top-six position at the end of the opening three rounds of 50 clays each. The Bidnija prodigy, who has yet to get to grips with his new shotgun, hit scores of 43, 46 and 43 for a total of 132, five clays short of the tally amassed by sixth-placed duo Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, of India, and China's Qiang Pan.

Rathore, who captured the gold medal in the double trap event at the Commonwealth Games, went on to win a shoot-off with Pan, thus earning the right to contest the final.

In the barrage, the Indian shooter completed a remarkable fightback when he smashed 45 clays to top the charts on 182 points, just one ahead of China's Binyuan Hu and Mashfi Almutairi, of Kuwait. Hu secured the silver medal after hitting six to Almutairi's five in the shoot-off.

Sweden's Hakan Dahlby was fourth after prevailing in a shoot-off with Italy's Daniele Di Spigno, both shooters having finished with a total of 179. Britain's Richard Faulds placed sixth with 175.

For Chetcuti, this was the second successive World Cup shoot in which he failed to qualify for the final barrage. He had finished 13th overall in a similar event held in Qingyuan, China last month.