BEIJING - If this was the last Olympic Games for Edmonton trapshooter Susan Nattrass, her legacy will be that she altered the face of her sport.
A winner of multi world-championship medals on the field of play, she harangued the International Sport Shooting Federation non-stop off it to give women their own Olympic trap and skeet shooting events separate from the men.
The first woman to shoot alongside men at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal won her point. She joined the women in 2000 in an event she championed.
The only thing missing for Nattrass is an Olympic medal.
A disastrous third and final round in Monday's qualifying knocked her out of contention for the six-shooter final and she ended up 11th at the Beijing Games.
She was ninth at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and sixth four years ago in Athens.
Monday's result hurt because after all Nattrass has put into her sport, an Olympic medal would crown her achievements perfectly.
She's won 15 world championship medals and her most recent world title was two years ago. This might have been her last chance to fill the gap.
"To be blunt, this is the one medal I don't have," an emotional Nattrass said at the Beijing Shooting Range Hall.
"It's hard. It's hard when it's probably my last Olympics."
Nattrass also said eight years ago that the Sydney Olympics were probably her last, and she was 49 then.
Now 57, her brother and coach Gary Nattrass and her other brother Brian Nattrass are encouraging her to continue to the 2012 Games in London, but she's not sure.
"I have absolutely no idea," she said. "I honestly thought I'd be in the final today, so I'm sort of dealing with that disappointment.
"I'm going to shoot next year because it will be my 40th year representing Canada at the world level and I don't think anyone's been that foolish to do it.'
"I still have the skill. It's whether I want to put myself through this. It's really agonizing when you fall on your butt in front of people and in front of media. It's really hard."
Nattrass raised the bar in women's shooting when she won the 1978 world title. Before many of her current Olympic competitors were born, her world championship score rivalled the top three on the men's side.
"In the 1980s, women started shooting better scores and I think all you need is one person to show you can do it," she said.
The same doggedness Nattrass put into shouldering her shotgun for 39 years for Canada, she put into her campaign for a separate women's Olympic event.
She had a letter translated into Spanish and sent to Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was then president of the International Olympic Committee.
When Samaranch met her, he said, "So you're the one."
Her persistence got to the point where higher-ups in the shooting community would walk the other way when they saw her coming.
"But I'd still go after them," Nattrass said in Sydney. "Every time I see these guys it was 'What about women's trap and skeet? What about women's trap and skeet?' And they would say 'Oh Susan."'
The energy she expended lobbying between 1992 and 1997 became a detriment to her shooting. She didn't qualify for the 1996 Games.
"If I had petitions, or questionnaires, or battles with the ISSF people, I could only do it at World Cups," she said. "That drains you and as you can see, this takes a lot of concentration and a lot of effort to shoot well."
But she maintains it was well worth it.
"You see all these women in the sport now who are full-time shooters, which in my day, we just never had," Nattrass said. "Look at all these young women out here."
The women who did better than Nattrass on Monday appreciated her efforts.
"Her role in trapshooting has been big and she's done many good things so women's trap is at a high level at the moment," said gold medallist Satu Makela-Nummela of Finland.
Bronze medallist Corey Cogdell of the U.S. is just 21, but she was aware of Nattrass's pioneering efforts.
"She's always trying to push the envelope and we need women like that," Cogdell said.
Nattrass works in an osteoporosis research clinic based in Seattle.
She was introduced to the sport by father Floyd, who was a trapshooter in the 1964 Olympics, but she was coached my her mother Marie.
As an athlete identified as a potential medallist by Road To Excellence, Nattrass said she received top-notch support and preparation from the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Shooting Federation of Canada.
She had physiotherapist Karen Decker with her Monday to work tension out of her shoulders between rounds.
"I got some wonderful treatment and the best I've ever received," Nattrass said. "I have only praise for everything they've done for me."
So Nattrass was baffled after Monday's debacle. She was in a five-way tie for fourth after two rounds in which she missed just five of 50 targets.
But she was wide on seven of her last 25.
"I still don't know what I did wrong," Nattrass said. "I did the very same thing in preparation for the third round as I did for the first two rounds and it just wasn't there."
