Extraordinary Olympic feud boils over

OLYMPIC champions Michael Diamond and Russell Mark have exploded in a sensational spat, just months out from Rio.

Michael Diamond has just returned home after winning the World Cup for trap shooting. Photo of him looking down the barrel of his shotgun.

OUR most decorated Olympic champion shooters Michael Diamond and Russell Mark have engaged in a sensational spat, just months out from Rio.

The gold medal-winning shooters have unloaded on each other, with Mark going so far as to say that if the pair ever roomed together again “they’d want to disarm us”.

The retired Mark has hit back at his former teammate and two-time gold medallist Diamond for personally attacking him on Facebook and taking a veiled swipe at teenage shooter Mitchell Iles.

In separate posts in February, since deleted but published by Fairfax, Diamond called Mark — who will commentate for Channel 7 in Rio — an “absolute joke”.

Diamond took aim at Mark’s foray into politics and ownership of two pubs in Victoria, claiming he was exploiting people on welfare in the fringe Melbourne suburb Hoppers Crossing.

Michael Diamond unleashes on Russell Mark.

“Why don’t you fund the junior team you have 2 pubs that you are taking doll recieving clients that walk out of your establishment broke after playing the pokies (gambling) but you have the ordasady [audacity] to have sat on SA BOARD as an athlete what crap are you trying to bring to all of our sport,” Diamond wrote.

“Didn’t you run for politics Russell marks and got run out I can recall the moment on TV u ran what did u run for if u had nothing to hide no balls mate. I can’t stand two faced fellows like you,” he added.

Mark has fired back at the extraordinary spray, telling Fairfax: “Michael is obviously feeling the pressure, but I think taking it out on social media on Mitchell or me is not the way to go about it.

“He is the best competitor I’ve ever shot against and I was lucky enough to ride on his coat tails, but just because he’s a great competitor doesn’t mean he’s a great person anymore.

“We obviously aren’t rooming together anymore. They’d want to disarm us if we were.”

Russell Mark won gold in the double trap at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Iles, 16, is appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over his non-selection in Australia’s Rio Olympic shooting team, named last Friday.

The appeal forced the Australian Olympic Committee to delay naming veterans Diamond and Adam Vella, who were nominated by Shooting Australian for the men’s trap event.

Last month, Diamond posted a photo of his wedding ring with a comment: “It won’t be the only iles il walk” — a dig seemingly directed at Iles.

“The most disappointing thing is the stuff about Mitch,” Mark added.

“You’ve got to remember this is a 16-year-old kid. I’m 52 — I can handle myself. That would have hurt Mitch. Everybody read that and thought, ‘What are you doing, Michael? You’re having a go at a boy here.’

“You don’t have a go at boys and you certainly don’t do it on social media.”

Mark explained that Diamond’s February attack came in response to a shot he took at him in August last year, when Diamond became the shooters’ representative on the Shooting Australia board.

“That’s really not him, being an administrator,” Mark said. “I said to him, ‘They’re just using you,’ and he took offence to it. So we cut ties then and there.”

Diamond won gold in trap in the 1996 and 2000 Games.