Commonwealth Games: Seanaid McIntosh maintains family tradition

Seonaid McIntosh is following in her mothers footsteps. Picture: Getty

Seonaid took her best shot at emulating their achievements yesterday in Brisbane, desperately keen to keep up the familial tradition.

The 22-year-old has immense promise. Results during the past 12 months suggested this was her turn to follow in the trail already blazed. And although the engineering student manufactured a bronze, just 2.9 points behind the champion, Singapore’s Martina Veloso, there was a sense of a history respected and mission, even  partly, accomplished.

“I’m on the table now in terms of family medals,” she said.

“Before I got to Australia, I’d been thinking about it. Obviously, there are my parents’ medals and most of my Mum and Jen’s medals are at my parents’ place. So it is  pretty cool.”

Shirley secured four of these Commonwealth medals with Jen, pictured right, who was only eighth in the event, owning five. A bit to go for Seonaid who is competing in the three-position event alongside her sibling today.

Her father and coach Donald – a fine marksman in his day – was cajoling both onwards but is now very much the odd man out of the household. But with a Scottish medal in this discipline every time it has been held in the Games from his wife’s Canadian triumph until now, he will have admired how his youngest coped with conditions which ebbed and flowed and the mental test of competing against herself before discovering how others had performed.

“There’s no final so you can’t see what’s going on while you’re doing it,” she said. “I just shot. I thought in my head before I came here in that I need to average about 103 per string based on what the boys had shot the other day. But the wind was a weird one here. It wasn’t as strong as it looked.”