Monday, December 04, 2006
Rama: Of underdogs and survivors
By Karlon N. Rama
Stage five
THEY aren’t playing with a deep bench. In fact, they don’t have athletes for over half of the events being offered. But, by golly, the shooters of Team Philippines in the on-going Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, are playing nobly.
In the men’s trap event, for example, former practical shooting superstar Jethro Dionisio came in a strong fourth in the qualifiers last Saturday, when the medal race for the discipline formally began at the Lusail Shooting Range.
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And, as an impending deadline forced this column’s writing to commence before the finals could end yesterday, The Jet was still fighting his way up from fifth.
Another shooter, Susan Aguado of the Philippine National Shooting Association (PNSA) is playing in the women’s 10-meter air pistol event and will come in very strongly in the finals after closing the qualifiers at third spot.
Both Dionisio and Aguado are veterans of regional competitions like the quadrennial Asian Games. Both saw action in the Southeast Asian Games last year.
The shooting team has 12 members— Aguado, Gay Corral, Ana Maria Gana, Veneranda Garcia, Eric Ang, Patricio Bernardo, Dionisio, Carolino Gonzales, Darius Hizon, Nathaniel “Tac” Padilla, Jaime Recio and Paul Rosario— playing for less than half of the 36 medals up for grabs.
The shooting events in Doha may be divided into two main parts— precision and shotgun— and may further be categorized into four disciplines: shotgun, rifle, pistol and running target.
Precision shooting applies to rifle, pistol and running target events where shots are scored from zero to ten, according to the place of the shot in the scoring rings.
In slow shooting, time limits are given for the entire event. In rapid fire shooting, time limits are given for one single shot or a group of five shots.
In the shotgun event, only two evaluations are possible: “bono” where the target is broken by the shot, or “zero”, where the shooter misses the target. Shotgun events have no time limits but there are limits on where the target may be reached by a shot.
Corral, Gana, Garcia, Ang, Bernando, Hizon, Rosario and Dionisio are in the trap and skeet events while the rest, like Gonzalez and Padilla, are precision shooters.
Most have yet to see action.
Powerhouse. As of the moment, China remains the team to beat. In the 10-meter air rifles final, China won the gold and the silver back-to-back, courtesy of shooters Liu Tianyou and Zhu Ginan. Liu shot an amazing 598 of 600 in the qualifications and averaged 10.2 points per shot in the final ten. He closed the match at 700.8 points, just 3.8 points away from the world record that is currently held by Austrian shooter Thomas Farnik.
Zhu, who holds the Asian record at 702.7, scored 594 in the qualifiers and averaged 10.4 points per shot in the final ten to close the match at 698.3 points.
The bronze medal went to Yu Jae Chul of South Korea, who finished the match at 697.9 points. Liu was strong coming into the games after finishing the qualifiers on top.
The Koreans went into the finals in second place, followed by India’s Narang Gagan, but ended up getting demolished by Asian record holder Zhu, who fought his way up from a faraway fifth in the qualifiers.
Shooting action resumes today with the men’s 50-meter rifle prone, the women’s 10-meter running target (slow), the women’s 10-meter running target (fast) and men’s the 50-meter rifle.
DOWN RANGE. In the local front, shooters from Kamagong Gun Club Inc., based inside the AFP Central Command Headquarters, gave a more-than-convincing convincing performance at the firing range recently, as it represented the 7th Regional Community Defense Group (RCDG) in the Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Cayton Cup held in Manila two weeks ago and landed 2nd overall.
Roy delos Santos clinched the bronze in the Standard Division, while shooters Glenn Diaz and Tyrone Mercader took 8th and 12th of over 200 contenders.
In the Production Division, John Melendrez took 4th spot, while Dr. Manny Barcenas landed 15th of over a hundred. The other shooters in the squad were Dr. Louie Señora and Andy Chua.
(knrama@gmail.com)
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