The new year is only a month old but, in sporting terms, it’s already shaping up to be a memorable one for so many reasons.

And there’s more to come, much more, with the highlight for many – the Olympic Games in Tokyo – just under six months away.

Gloucestershire has a proud record when it come to the Olympics and among the very best from this county is Ian Coley, who went to the Olympics not once, not twice, but six times.

The 72-year-old Coley’s speciality was shooting and he both coached and managed Great Britain teams at the sporting spectacular with the two big highlights coming in 2000 and 2012 when Richard Faulds and Peter Wilson stormed to gold medal success.

And Coley’s input into those memorable wins was recognised more widely a few months after the London Olympics because in 2013 he was awarded an MBE for services to shooting.

Ian Coley was a decent shooter in his own right as well and he represented, coached or managed England and Great Britain teams “well over 200 times”.

Coley, who lives in Gretton with his wife Jayne, is one of the best known names around the county, not only through his sporting exploits but also because he worked in the shooting industry for the best part of half a century.

But although he is very well known around these parts, he wasn’t actually born in Gloucestershire.

“I was born in Solihull and moved to Gloucestershire when I was very young when my parents took over the Highwayman pub between Birdlip and Cirencester,” he explained.

The young Coley went to primary school in Cirencester before taking a slightly different education path from his older brother Chris, who is a big name around the county in both cricket and horseracing.

While Chris went to Cheltenham College, Ian went to Leckhampton Court School, saying with a laugh: “I wasn’t bright enough to go to Cheltenham College.”

By his own admission the younger Coley didn’t like school.

“I hated it,” he said. “I used to play truant and I left school when I was 15.”

And while Coley, a dad to Phillip and a grandfather of two, certainly wouldn’t advocate bunking off school, he did at least use his ‘spare’ time wisely.

“I used to help the local gamekeeper,” he recalled. “It put me on the way to what I ended up doing for a living, it taught me what being a gamekeeper was all about.”

When he officially left school, Coley became a trainee gamekeeper at Coombe End Manor, near Elkstone, opposite the Highwayman.

He worked there for 18 months but although he loved the job he found it difficult at times to do some of the dustier work because he had asthma.

That, coupled with his dad Jerry leaving the Highwayman, saw him move back to Birmingham for a while where he landed a job in a shop in Hall Green.

And it was that job that really shaped Coley’s life.

“I sold guns and a bit of fishing tackle,” he explained. “When I came back to Cheltenham I got a job working at Fletchers Sports.

“They had shops in Gloucester and Cheltenham and I worked in the shop in Winchcombe Street in Cheltenham.

“I was there for four or five years and I became the manager. We were a gunsmiths but we sold lots of things – rugby boots, toys, models.”

By now Coley had started to develop his lifelong love for shooting.

Initially it was air guns that attracted him before he caught the clay pigeon shooting bug after a visit to Withington fete.

By the late 1960s he was into competitive shooting, inspired by the exploits of Bob Braithwaite who won gold for Great Britain at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

“I’d been shooting clays but when I saw Bob Braithwaite I thought, ‘Crikey, I like this sort of game, I’ll take this up’,” he said.

“Little did I know that the next time Great Britain won an Olympic shooting gold through Richard Faulds I’d be part of the team!”

Coley, although clearly a top drawer coach and manager, was obviously a very good shot as well because he represented Great Britain for the first time in 1971.

By then he had moved on from Fletchers and set up his own gunsmiths business.

“An opportunity came up at 444 Lower High Street in Cheltenham and I opened up my own shop on 1st January 1970,” he recalled.

“I had to scrabble together £5,000 and I remember doing the figures, I had to try to take £25,000 in the first year.

“But I did that in the first four months, the business just took off.”

It certainly did, so much so that by the mid-1980s he was offering corporate shooting days at stately homes around the country before setting up his shooting school at Andoversford, just outside Cheltenham, in 1987.

In 2010 he moved his gun shop up to Andoversford as well and although he sold the business three years ago he remains a shareholder and is rightly very proud of what he has achieved over the years.

And that extends to the sporting world even though he never fulfilled his dream of competing at the Olympics.

“I shot for England and Great Britain and had a vision of getting to the Olympics and getting a medal,” he admitted.

“I made it into the top four before the Moscow Olympics in 1980 but that was the year of the boycott and the shooting team didn’t go.”

In reality only the top two would have been selected anyway but Coley at least had the consolation of competing in the Friendship Games in Canada that summer.

“Eventually, reality told me that I wasn’t quite good enough and in 1989 I started to get into coaching,” explained Coley.

He was still competing at a decent level at this stage as well – the last time he competed for Great Britain was in 1993 - but when he went to the world championships in Moscow in 1990 it was as coach/manager of the GB team.

And the team did very well, too, because Kevin Gill returned with a silver medal, and one year later, with Coley still in charge, the team did even better because Peter Boden won gold in the double trap in Perth in Australia.

It was a good period for British shooting because Julian Womble also won a world junior gold medal in the double trap and Coley, for one, wanted to build on this success.

“It was the first success I’d had with double trap and I decided to focus on it,” he explained. “It was a fairly new discipline and I identified it as a good medal chance for Great Britain.”

He was spot on of course because within 10 years Great Britain was celebrating its first Olympic gold for more than three decades.

By then Coley had already been to Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta four years later – “I went to six Olympics on the bounce,” he said with understandable pride – before Richard Faulds’ golden performance in Sydney, Australia, in 2000.

And that special moment in British sporting history is something that Coley remembers as if it were yesterday.

“You cannot describe the feeling when you’re so heavily involved,” he said. “Although it wasn’t me doing the shooting we all had that same goal to win the gold medal.

“When we won it, it was magical, it brings a tear to my eye now talking about it, it was the most magical moment.”

Twelve years later at the London Olympics and Great Britain were winning another shooting gold, this time through Peter Wilson.

Coley had been to the Athens Games in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 but those gold medal wins in 2000 and 2012 obviously topped all the other achievements.

“They were very, very special moments,” he said. “I consider myself very fortunate. I know what it means to win an Olympic gold medal, it’s the ultimate goal, it’s what everyone wants to achieve.”

So what makes a top shooter?

“Hand/eye coordination coupled with a very strong mentality,” said Coley. “Shooting is very much a mental game.

“I do believe you are born with the ability to win a gold medal. Somebody has got to get the best out of you but gold medal winners are a special animal.

“They’ve all got something about them. Winners are special people.”

Coley more than played his part in the successes of Faulds and Wilson, of course, and being awarded an MBE in 2013 for services to shooting is huge testament to that.

It came in the New Year Honours and Coley recalled: “I was told about the award three weeks before Christmas.

“I had to keep it quiet but I told my wife and I told my mum at Christmas.”

He was presented with his medal at Windsor Castle in April and he added: “I was accompanied by my wife and my two grandchildren Haydn and Imogen, it was made very special because the Queen was there.”

But while it was certainly one of the great days in the Coley family’s life, there was also a tinge of sadness.

“My mum wasn’t well enough to go,” said Coley. “I tried to persuade her to come but she was too ill. She’d been to Buckingham Palace many years before when my dad was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.”

Sadly, Betty Coley died a few weeks after her son had been awarded the MBE at the age of 95.

Ian Coley is still involved in GB shooting although he is not hands-on like the old days.

“I’m on the selection panel,” he said. “I go to three or four meetings a year, they ask for my advice and expertise.”

Jayne Coley has never been into shooting but she still likes the outdoor life because she is big into gundogs.

“She competes in field trials with her dogs,” said her husband. “She has been both a competitor and a judge at the very pinnacle of the sport, she’s represented England.”

Meanwhile, it will be no surprise to learn that Ian Coley still shoots for fun as often as he can. When he spoke to The Local Answer he was looking forward to flying out to Tucson in Arizona for a 12-day competition involving some 800 or 900 competitors.

“I’m competing in the super veterans’ category,” he laughed. “I can compete with them. I went last year and came home with a bit of money – or should I say fistful of dollars!”

Coley has shot all over the world over the years.

“I’ve competed behind the Iron Curtain, in China, Korea, Australia, Brazil, Mexico,” he continued. “I’ve been everywhere, I’ve been very, very fortunate.”

So which is his favourite country?

“The UK!” came the quick reply.

And after all that he has achieved for shooting in this country, that really is no surprise.