Fort Benning (US): Collyn Loper, blind since birth in her right eye, has qualified for the Athens Olympics on the US shooting team, emulating her idol Annie Oakley with her shotgun skills. “If I could go back in time, she would be who I would like to meet,” Loper said.

The 17-year-old right-hander is forced to shoot left-handed, but the switch to southpaw has been no problem for Loper, who will shoot trap on the US squad named Friday to the Athens Games. “I just picked it up left-handed. I’m kind of lucky I never had to learn it right-handed,” she said. “It’s just natural. I never had to adjust. I will hold to the right of the target. That gives me more space to get it ahead of me. Otherwise, it’s going into my dead spot really.”

Loper has darkened the right lens in her shooting goggles so the light she can sense does not prove a distraction. “I had too much light coming in. It will make the target look like it’s glowing,” she said. “Now, even if I had a little vision in it, I couldn’t see through that.”

Right-eye blindness has not proven a handicap when it comes to accuracy.

“You shoot so fast, it’s just instinct,” Loper said. “If I’m not zoned in, I will flat out miss it. But I have trained so much that that rarely happens.”

Loper’s father, who started her shooting with a trip to the range at age 10, drives his daughter 2 ½ hours here from her Alabama home for practice on weekdays at the US military base.

“I miss school. I don’t have an option. They aren’t open on weekends,” Loper said. “Teachers have become more lenient. I think a lot of them thought I was just goofing off. When people first meet me, they are surprised. They know me now. They respect where I have come from and what I have had to overcome.”

Loper shoots quail, doves and deer — to the horror of some of her friends — and tried in vain to set up a backyard target area in her neighbourhood. “I’ve asked if I’m allowed to shoot in my backyard. They didn’t like that a lot,” she said. “We leave a lot of lead out there — too much to go through without land issues.”

Issues also dog Loper when she travels with guns on airplanes, locking them and checking them sometimes not proving cautious enough. “We’ve had problems at airports after 9-11,” she said. “I would rather have more security than not having it at all. I have to tell people I have firearms, check shells and lock them up. Every once in a while we freak them out.”