Carlton was fortunate to host another well-known Carlton person at the President’s function for the match against the Sydney Swans at The Dome. Olympic Gold and Silver Medallist, Russell Mark was the special guest for the match.

Russell, a clay target shooter in the double trap, has competed at four Olympic Games and next month will be number five when he represents Australia at the Beijing Olympic Games. A Gold Medallist at Atlanta in 1996 and Silver Medallist in Sydney 2000, he was the coach of the Australian Shooting Team at the Athens Olympic Games.

He returned to competition following the Athens Olympic Games and won the 2006 Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in Melbourne in 2006. He continued to compete and was selected in the Australian Team for Beijing.

He has been won of the world’s best trapshooters for more than a decade and was the first shooter in any international discipline to win all four of the world’s major international events - The World Cup, The World Cup Final, The World Championship and the Olympic Games.

Russell was one of only four individual Gold Medallists at the Atlanta Olympic Game, the other three being Kieren Perkins, Susie O’Neill and Michael Diamond. His explanation of his clay target shooting event, the Double Trap, was very simple.

“You have around 1.4 seconds to hit two clay targets, ten centimetres in diameter, flying away from you at around 150kmh.”

Of course for many at the luncheon as impressive as his sporting CV is, it is the fact that he is an avid Carlton supporter, and member, that makes him important.