AMANDA Lightfoot insists her next outing at the Winter Olympics cannot come quick enough after getting her Games debut up and running in the 7.5km sprint.

The 27-year-old, from South Shields, placed 75th in the first women’s biathlon event of the Games in Rosa Khutor, missing three targets in the range to finish with a time of 24:48.9mins.

With that disappeared hopes of racing in the 10km pursuit on Tuesday, she needed to be in the top 60, and so she must wait until the 15km individual on Valentine’s Day.

And, having watched Jenny Jones win Britain’s first-ever Olympic medal on snow in the snowboard slopestyle final before racing, Lightfoot is itching to get back out.

“I knew it was going to be really tough to get to the pursuit. The girls out there had really good shoots. Miss one, you have a chance, miss three and you’re out which is unfortunate and I am absolutely gutted,” said Lightfoot.

“I will have a bit more of a build up towards the individual. I will have a bit more training leading up to it and hopefully it will go really well. I am psyched actually; I can’t wait for another race.

“I was sat in my bed resting up for the race watching Jenny. She did really well, it was awesome. I saw her at the opening ceremony the other day and it was really fantastic to see her. She is a really good girl and I am so chuffed for her.

“It is totally inspiring, we have got a medal now for Team GB and we are one team, it is fantastic.”

Meanwhile on Saturday, Lee Jackson got his second Olympic biathlon campaign off to a disappointing start as he too failed to do enough in the men’s 10km sprint to reach the pursuit.

Jackson placed 67th when once again the top 60 was required and admitted he was too tired to even notice Ole Einar Bjoerndalen equaling fellow Norwegian Bjorn Daehlie’s all-time Winter Olympic medal haul of 12 with gold.

“I was too tired to notice what he was doing, I was just concentrating on hitting my targets and skiing,” said Jackson, who made his Olympic debut at Vancouver 2010.

“He looks good though and I hoped he would do it. He has come in and won with one mistake and I there was no one in the latter groups that could challenge him.

“But it is great to see people at 40 years old be able to come and do that. Being 33 myself it gives me another nine years left in my career as a biathlete.

“But if I have many more days like this one I don’t think I’ll survive it. It was the hardest sprint I have done.”

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