Sturgeon County trapshooter Lindsey Majeau-Boddez was on target for a silver medal at the recent Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The 37-year-old Majeau-Boddez scored 86 out of 100 during four rounds at her first multi-sport international competition.
“It was just one of those days where it all worked out,” said the occupational therapist for Alberta Health Services.
Majeau-Boddez finished one target short of tying the gold medallist from the United States.
“That was the difference between the gold and silver but I wasn’t disappointed at all. My goal was to make the final,” said the mother of two boys.
Her scores were 24, 21, 20 and 21 out of 25 targets per round.
“In the final I shot a 21 out of 25 with one shot, which is amazing,” she said “There is a lot of pressure when the top six go into the final and you’re only allowed one shot instead of two. It’s different after shooting two shots all day. You don’t have that backup with two shots at every target. You get to load two shells in your gun so if you miss [the target] with the first one you could always get it with the second one, but in the final you’re only allowed to load one shell.”
Majeau-Boddez didn’t realize what her final score was until she checked out the electronic leader board after the last round of 25.
“I didn’t want to know what was going on while we’re shooting. It’s really easy to cheat and peek at this board and know exactly what the scores are.”
Her reaction was one of disbelief.
“I looked at my [team] manager and said, ‘Did I just win a silver medal?’ He went yeah and I said, ‘No way!’ I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I had to go borrow a cellphone to call my husband [Trevor] to tell him I won a silver medal. It was exciting.”
Winning a medal at the Pan Am Games capped off what she called the thrill of a lifetime.
“I was very proud to be a Canadian,” she said. “The walk into the stadium for the opening ceremonies was the closest I came to having a lump in my throat. It was amazing. We were all singing O Canada and then to see this wall of 70,000 people there was very cool.”
Majeau-Boddez qualified for the Pan Am Games as one of the top two female shooters at the 2010 national team trials.
The alternate for the Commonwealth Games last year had also represented Canada at World Cup competitions and the Championships of the Americas.
Majeau-Boddez was surprised by her podium finish. She only recently started pulling the trigger on her $13,000 shotgun after a lengthy maternity leave.
In preparation for the Pan Am Games she shot three to four rounds of 75 to 100 targets every day at the family acreage south of Riviere Qui Barre with the $9,000 voice-activated machine her husband bought her for Christmas.
“Coming back after so many years of not competing I wasn’t sure if this was something I was going to keep doing,” she said. “I didn’t shoot well [at the World Cup] in Serbia, which was just in September, so I kind of had to work that out a little bit.”
Majeau-Boddez credits a mental training coach for getting her sights refocused.
“I’m a good shooter but the mental game is what used to beat me. Even if I missed one target, I used to go, ‘what did I do wrong?’ Now I just sing the whole time when I shoot, that way you can’t think about it because the minute you start to think you can’t shoot well. You can’t have any doubt, you just have to do it.”
Majeau-Boddez grew up in Stony Plain and at the age of 12 starting learning to shoot from her father, Art.
“He always told me to just shoot. Don’t think about it, just see the target and hit the target.”
Art used to shoot at the amateur level with the legendary Susan Nattrass, the roommate and trapshooting teammate of Majeau-Boddez at the Pan Am Games.
“He was like, ‘You’re going to be the next Susan Nattrass.’ That’s what you kind of grew up hearing because there were no other women shooters at the time. She was the only one and she was shooting with the men. She really paved the way.”
The next competition for Majeau-Boddez is the first World Cup in 2012 at Tucson, Arizona in March.
