Monday, October 16, 2006 Rama: Of local boys and the French phenom By Karlon N. Rama Stage five
FRANCE’s Eric Grauffel dominated the Open Division of the Asean League Championship, which closed at the Cebu Pistol and Rifle Association (CPRA) last Saturday, showing again the form that made him World Shoot Champion thrice.
He had a straightforward yet unforgiving game plan when he went in and took on his first few stages of the competition last Thursday– to play consistently and to not make any mistakes.
And he did just that.
Shooters from the Philippine Team likewise made waves in the competition, with Jag Lejano and Stephen Hinojales taking second and third spot to the French phenom.
Moreover, the hotly contested Standard Division championship trophy went to the hands Nelson Uygongco.
Cebu City’s Dino Cinco, for his part, won the gold in the Standard Division’s junior category and was granted the coveted International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) President’s Medal.
Jag (real name Jeufro) was the Modified Division champion in the last World Shoot, held in Ecuador.
Hinojales, meanwhile, was no.13 in the Open Division of that match.
The official results are yet to be posted both at the CPRA and the Philippine Practical Shooting Association websites.
The competition in the Open Division category is the fastest and most action-packed in practical shooting matches.
Here, shooters use pistols that have been enhanced with electronic optical devices for faster target-acquisition and compensators to lessen recoil and keep the gap between the first and second shots short.
Impressive. Grauffel, in an interview last Oct. 10, had predicted that shooters from Team Philippines would clinch top spots in the match.
He said he’d observed how shooters like Lejano and Hinojales performed in Ecuador and, before that, the Austral-Asian Championships in Bali, Indonesia, where the two landed both in the top five in the overalls.
Grauffel also had his eyes out for another Filipino shooter, a 15-year-old boy by the name of Kenneth Ray Augustin who, according to sources, landed seventh in the Open Division and clinched the junior category trophy.
Grauffel said the Philippines has more or less about the same firearm laws as France and both governments recognize practical shooting as a legitimate sport.
But getting into shooting is more expensive here than in France where competition among firearm and ammunition makers drives costs lower.
Augustine is the incumbent Space City Challenge Open Division champion. He clinched the title in a match held in Houston, Texas, earlier this year.
I saw the boy in action as he took on Stage 23, overseen by Chief Range Officer Ceferino Layao, at the height of the competition. He posted the fastest time.
Embarrassing. An entry written by Brian Enos, one of the top shooting athletes the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) ever produced, in the forum section of his www.brianenos.com website is very disconcerting.
Those who can ought to do something.
He headlined the post as the “first successful fraud order in my store in seven years” and addressed it “to the Philippines.”
Apparently, the buyer (full name is mentioned in the website), of San Antonio Village 2, Cebu City, placed an order for $95.38 worth of Slide-Glide, a special firearm lubricant, and some brushes from the gunshop that Brian Enos owns and markets on the web.
The order was charged to a credit card account that, later on, turned out to be owned by somebody else who complained about the unauthorized transaction.
Further down the post, he wrote: “This issue brings up another issue regarding overseas sales. I’m about ready to set my store for US sales only. International orders are pretty much just a loser overall. It’s amazing how many orders I have to re-send, especially to the Philippines. A lot of stuff just never shows up.”
