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| Human Interest | |
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Further Personal Information | |
| Residence | Nutley, GBR |
| Higher education | University of Reading: Reading, ENG |
General Interest | |
| Ambitions | To compete at the 2012 London Olympic Games in her own country, and win a medal. (weareengland.org, 18 Aug 2010) |
Sport Specific Information | |
| When and where did you begin this sport? | As a schoolgirl she was a pentathlete, but decided around 2003 to focus on shooting. |
General Interest | |
| Other information | FUNDING CUTS In 2008 she said that her funding prospects to help her reach the 2012 London Olympics were looking "very bleak" after cash was withdrawn from some sports due to a shortfall in government funding. "My funding prospects look very bleak now and I am going to have to take a part-time job so I can continue with my training. But by doing that it means I will have less time to train...We were told after the funding announcement that all our booked trips would be honoured but after that they will have to be self-funded. I do feel the system has let me down." (thisislondon.co.uk, 29 Dec 2008) GUN LAWS HAMPER PRACTICE Strict British gun laws [introduced after the 1996 Dunblane massacre] have hampered the training of British shooters, according to England's head pistol shooting coach Tom Redhead, speaking in 2006. Automatic pistols are banned, self-loading pistols are restricted, and single shot pistols can only be used with noticeable modifications. Shooters are forced to train with air pistols, but these have different trigger weight, recoil and balance and therefore puts cartridge pistol shooters at a disadvantage. British shooters, like Lydall, are often forced to train abroad in countries like Switzerland where time and financial constraints limit training time. Redhead praised Lydall for her performances under such restrictive training conditions, likening the situation to a tennis player being forced to train with a badminton racquet 48 weeks a year before being asked to beat Roger Federer with a tennis racquet for an Olympic gold medal. By the end of 2006, the British government considered exempting the country's top shooters from the ban, exploring the possibility of allowing them to practice on Ministry of Defence property. (telegraph.co.uk, 05 Nov 2006; theage.com.au, 24 Mar 2006) |