A devastated Lauryn Mark says she'll have to reassess her shooting career after nerves cruelled any chance of winning an Olympic medal in the women's skeet.
"To be quite frank I'm gutted," said Mark after her London Games campaign ended at the Royal Artillery Barracks on Sunday.
Mark got off to a shaky start, scoring just 17 from a possible 25 targets in the opening round to be 15th in a 17-woman field.
She fought back somewhat to shoot 22 and 20 in rounds two and three, but the gap to the top six was too great and she missed the final.
Mark said she had hoped her experience at the Athens Olympics would help her, adding that she was hungry to improve on that fourth-placed finish in 2004.
"I just didn't handle the pressure well. I was extremely nervous. I was finding it very difficult to settle my nerves," an emotional Mark said.
"I don't know if it's that I have been out of touch with Olympic competition for a few years or what but I just didn't handle the nerves well and that is the result you get when I couldn't pull myself together.
"I was shooting well at home but from the moment I landed in London I've been up and down and dealing with the frustrations of an up-and-down performance and I think just that doubt has played on my mind."
Mark is married to 1996 Olympic gold medallist Russell Mark.
The couple courted controversy in the lead up to the Games having sought, and been denied, permission to room together in the athletes' village.
Lauryn Mark also copped some criticism back home for a bikini photo shoot in an Australian magazine prior to London.
The couple have two children and run a coaching and corporate events business and Mark said they would all factor when she decided whether to press ahead toward Rio de Janeiro in four years time.
"I do have a family and a business and I have had to sacrifice and commit a lot coming into these Games so now it is just a matter of sitting down and re-establishing things," Mark said.
"I think it might take a few weeks to get home with my family and then really sit down and see if it is even viable to try and go for another four years."
Mark said she would stay in London until husband Russell competed in the double trap on Thursday before returning home to Melbourne to be reunited with their children Sierra and Indy.
