Skeet shooter Tipple digs deep after Family’s rocky ride

Chloe Tipple couldn’t even pick up her gun not so long ago.

CHLOE Tipple couldn’t even pick up her gun not so long ago.

Now the 30-year-old is about to line up at the Asaka Shooting Range with her sights set on nabbing an Olympic medal in skeet shooting.

Five years after becoming the first female shooter to represent New Zealand in skeet at the Olympics, Tipple certainly has had her fair share of ups and downs ahead of her second Games.

None more so than the down of losing her mother, Betsy, who suddenly passed away in April 2020 from a brain aneurysm.

It was behind the Christchurch athlete putting her gun away for five months, leaving the Olympics and shooting the last thing on her mind as she and her family spent the Covid-19 enforced lock down on their Christchurch farm.

‘‘When you lose someone you love like that, it just puts things in perspective, and you dwell on what matters. And at that moment it was family,’’ Tipple told Newsroom shortly before departing for

Japan.

‘‘Shooting meant nothing to me at that stage after losing my mum . . . your whole world gets tipped upside down. I was just trying to work out what my life was going to look like without her.’’

Tipple got back on the horse last September, stepping onto the suburban range in Marshland, Christchurch, to rediscover her love for the sport which she’d won two World Cup medals in. The first was in 2017 in New Delhi, where she snared bronze, before she dug deep to win silver in 2019.

Tipple overcame plenty of adversity ahead of the

Acapulco World Cup, including a slump in form,

‘Shooting meant nothing to me at that stage after losing my mum . . . your whole world gets tipped upside down.’ CHLOE TIPPLE

and a disconnect with Cyprusbased coach George Archilleos.

But there was more to come shortly before the World Cup event in Mexico, where Tipple departed for two days after the Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15.

Her father, David, and the wider family came under scrutiny from media and the public after it was revealed the gunman purchased firearms from their family store, Gun

City, over the previous two years.

‘‘My whole family, my whole everything that I knew and loved was under attack because of the gun business,’’ Tipple said. ‘‘I’m on the plane, I’m flying over to Mexico and the air hostess is asking me what I’m going for and when I said ‘shooting’ she gasped and didn’t know what to say. I felt like I was the bad guy,’’ Tipple told Newsroom.

‘‘I didn’t have my coach, I didn’t have dad, I didn’t have any support person from New Zealand – I was literally alone. I felt as deep in the deep end as I could get.’’

In a test of character, she managed to dig herself out of the hole to claim her second World Cup medal in the space of two years.

Competition has since been scarce due to the global pandemic, with Tipple and her fellow Kiwi shooters not allowed by their federation to travel, unlike most of their overseasbased rivals.

Tipple and trap shooter Natalie Rooney did travel to Australia for a competition at the end of May, but she’s otherwise had a limited build-up.

The good news for her is she won’t have to contend with world No 1 Amber Hill, after the gold medal favourite was ruled out due to a positive Covid-19 test shortly before departing for Tokyo.

Great Britain star Hill, who finished sixth in Rio and nabbed silver in the World Cup in May, said she was ‘‘broken’’ after being forced into isolation.