BEIJING -- THE BIGGEST STAGE OF HIS shooting career proved to be a jolt for this diminutive marksman. And Eric Ang can’t be blamed for looking shell-shocked after bungling his date with Olympic glory.

The intrepid 37-year-old trapshooter from Laoag City took himself out of contention right away, spraying errant buck shots and missing six birds in the first string of the competition at the Beijing Shooting Range here.

“He was completely out of rhythm at the start,” said Art Macapagal, president of the Philippine National Shooting Association, of the Filipino wild card who was vying in his first Olympics. “His misses were spread out, he just could not find a rhythm.”

That tragic 19 basically shot Ang’s hopes of landing in the finals shootout among trap’s best six scorers after 125 clays. His second and third strings of 24 and 22 sealed his fate ahead of today’s resumption of the competition.

“I thought Eric was also a bit jittery in the first set (of 25 birds),” said Macapagal, himself a former champion pistol shooter.

Down seven birds after two strings to a still-perfect Italian world record-holder Giovanni Pellielo, the 37-year-old Ang opened the third with four consecutive hits, matching the effort of the tall, stoic Slovakian Erik Varga who eventually missed tying the co-leaders by just a bird with 72.

Then Ang came to grief. Two shots broke the stillness of Beijing’s Fragrant Hills that framed the range but Ang failed to touch the fifth clay. A rotation later, thundering two-clap echoes still got nothing for the Filipino.

Ang stared at his feet and shook his head slightly. For perhaps the longest five seconds of his life, he just stood there, not bothering to take the spent casings off the breaches of his double-barrelled Beretta DT10 gun.

He knew it was over.

Eight points behind Pellielo and the Czeck Republic’s David Kostelecky, Ang needs a miracle to vault out of a five-man tie for 29th place in a field of 35 and into the shootoffs.