Amber Jo Rutter of Team Great Britain competes in the Shooting Skeet Women's Final . GETTY IMAGES

British shooter Amber Rutter has demanded accountability for the refereeing decision that denied her Olympic gold in skeet shooting.


In Sunday's final, the gold medal went to Chile's Francisca Crovetto after she was judged to have missed the shot, in a decision that the British press has described as theft. Rutter and Chile's Francisca Crovetto Chadid were tied after three of the four tie-breaking rounds.

Rutter herself, 26, questions the referee's decision and considers that it was a "poor and incorrect" decision taken by the three referees, for which she demands accountability, as well as a discussion and that a plan be drawn up to prevent it from ever happening again.

In a statement posted on Instagram, she refered to the number of comments and images that have been disseminated in recent days in which she is "clearly" seen hitting her last shot. This did not result in a gold medal.



The shooter assures that this is a situation that has happened to other shooters besides herself. Therefore, with the shooters' community in mind, she says that all athletes "deserve to compete on equal terms", especially at the Olympic Games.

To this end, he says that other formulas can be used in shooting, such as experienced and exceptional judges, new technologies such as VAR (Video Assistant Referee), a recording technology widely used in other sports such as football and which, he recalls, is already used in International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) competitions.

Rutter, who protested at the time with her coach about the refereeing decision, recalls that she has already experienced episodes of negativity after going through the VARC before Tokyo 2020. She hopes that there will be a change in her sport and defends that the elite level they are at should not allow such "mistakes", not even as a "possibility".

"I hope we can work together, athletes, coaches and officials, to create something better," she says in her Instagram post, in which she says she is "very proud" of her silver medal despite the little physical and mental preparation she had had. Now she will dedicate herself to "being a mother and wife again" and "enjoying life with a touch of silver", she concluded.