The door is open for teenage shooting star Mitchell Iles to make his Olympics debut in Rio, having won his non-nomination appeal the day after Michael Diamond was ruled ineligible.
Iles had challenged the nomination of dual gold medallist Diamond and Adam Vella ahead of him to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The CAS ruled in the 17-year-old's favour on Thursday, upholding one of three grounds of the appeal and paving the way for him to earn nomination to the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) before Monday's deadline.
The ruling, released on Friday morning, stated there was no bias in the decision of Shooting Australia's (SA) selectors to omit Iles.
However it said they had failed to take into account his potential to develop into a strong competitor at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
The nomination status of Iles, widely viewed as an extraordinary talent, will now be referred back to SA for reconsideration by a different selection panel to the one which initially excluded him.
Further helping his cause is SA's decision on Thursday to rule Diamond ineligible for his seventh Olympics following last month's drink-driving and firearms charges.
If Diamond decides not to appeal Iles will be in line for nomination anyway because he is the Olympic team's reserve.
Diamond had 48 hours from Thursday afternoon to appeal, however despite maintaining his innocence, the 44-year-old has reportedly decided not to fight the decision which was supported by the AOC.
SA chief executive Michael Marangon said the peak body respected the CAS ruling.
"Shooting Australia has maintained throughout this process that it respects the rights of any athlete to pursue a non-nomination as Mitchell has done," Marangon said.
"Mitchell is a member of the Shooting Australia high-performance program, and is a talented young athlete with a great career ahead of him.
"We look forward to celebrating his future successes, as does everyone in the close-knit sport shooting community."
