A 26-year-old shooter has won bronze in the Tokyo 2020 men's trap shooting final - and was cheered on back home by his Nuthampstead shooting club.

Matthew Coward-Holley had a promising schoolboy rugby career but took up shooting after breaking his back twice.

The 26-year-old athlete secured Team GB's 17th medal of the competition - his bronze replicates Ed Ling's success in Rio 2016.

Matthew took up shooting at Nuthampstead Shooting Ground eight years ago - and his team were cheering him on from the clubhouse.

He hails from Essex and is Felsted School's first Olympic medal winner since Los Angeles 1984, when Robert Cattrall won Bronze as captain for Great Britain's hockey team.

In 2019, Matthew became the first Briton to win a world title in an individual Olympic shotgun discipline.

And his club back in Nuthampstead were overjoyed at his achievement - as is the Crow!

After the event, the club tweeted: "Congratulations Matt Coward Holley on his Bronze in Tokyo.
Awesome shooting."

Matthew said: "To come away with a medal, to be European and world champion, and now Olympic bronze medallist is a little bit surreal.

“We all come here fighting for gold but, at the end of the day, it’s the Olympics and any medal is phenomenal.

“It still hasn’t sunk in yet, I think it’s going to take a while to comprehend that medal hanging around my neck."

Matthew scored 33 out of 40 targets.

He fired 14 consecutive hits to move into medal contention but three misses out of nine saw him place third in the final elimination.

He said: "We had Ed Ling in Rio, Steve Scott [in the Rio 2016 double trap] as well – we like bronze medals."

He added: "I didn’t really imagine this until a couple of years ago when I’d broken onto the scene.

"That was when the Olympic dream became real and it could happen."

The Nuthampstead shooter will return tomorrow morning as part of Team GB's mixed team trap.

He will appear alongside Northern Ireland's Kirsty Hegarty in the mixed team trap event as the duo hope to follow up their World Cup win in Italy in May.

The mixed team trap event takes place on Saturday at 1am UK time. Good luck Matthew!