Scotland shooters Neil Stirton and Jon Hammond endured a tough day at the Beijing World Cup, as they both failed to reach the final in the 50m rifle three positions final in the Far East.

Both performed excellently in the prone discipline in yesterday's preliminary round, but both struggled to continue that form in the standing and kneeling events.

And in today's round it was a similar story with Hammond, who finished fifth at the World Championships last year, ending up 29th, while Stirton fell to 42nd.

Former world junior champion Hammond again notched up an impressive 397 points in the prone event, could only manage 375 and 387 in the latter two, giving him a combined total of 1159.

Stirton started in similar fashion and also scored 397 in the opening discipline, but he floundered in the standing and kneeling rounds, picking up totals of 379 and 374 to give him 1150 points overall.

However while Stirton's score didn't light up the leaderboard, it still represents a personal best for the Scots rifleman, who only took up the event last year.

Gold went to Norway's Ole Magnus Bakken, who displayed superb consistency to pick up 1179 points and then 97.7 in the final, while silver and bronze went to Slovenia's Rajmond Debevec and Serbia's Stevan Pletikosic respectively.