Team effort as shooters finally hit the target

Team effort as shooters finally hit the target

After days of firing blanks, Singapore's shooters finally got off the mark at the Asian Games yesterday at the Ongnyeon International Shooting Range.

The men's trio of Gai Bin, Nigel Lim and Poh Lip Meng clinched the Republic's first shooting medal at the Incheon Asiad when they finished third in the 25 metre standard pistol team event with a score of 1,692.

China won the team event on 1,710, ahead of silver medallists South Korea (1,707).

It is Singapore's first medal in the pistol event at the Asiad.

Gai was Singapore's top performer, shooting 567 to finish eighth in the individual rankings.

The 46-year-old cut a relieved figure as he met reporters, with beads of sweat dripping from his forehead, and his voice still trembling slightly.

"I'm really happy that we finally got a medal. At least now, we have something to show for our efforts," he said.

Poh, 45, said: "We knew we had a shot at the medal so we tried to stay focused and forced ourselves to recover quickly after a bad shot."

The 25m standard pistol event has three stages.

In stage one, shooters have to fire four rounds of five shots, with 150 seconds for each round.

The timing is slashed to 20 seconds for the second stage, before it goes down to 10 seconds for the third - and most crucial - stage.

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Gai, who won a Commonwealth Games gold in the same event four years ago, said: "We shot well early on but we lost focus in the last stage.

"Maybe the pressure to win something got to us.

"I certainly felt it when shooting, even though I tried very hard to block it out.

"I usually shoot 190 for the final stage but I only shot a 180 this time.

"If I had kept my cool, I'm confident I could have got the gold medal."

China's Ding Feng won the event with a score of 577, beating South Korea's Kim Jun Hong (574) and Vietnam's Ha Minh Thanh (571). The medal comes as a timely boost for the 17-strong shooting contingent in Incheon, having come close since the competition started last Saturday.

They did not win any medals four years ago in Guangzhou.

Nigel Lim finished sixth in the 50m pistol last Saturday while Jasmine Ser came close to breaking the deadlock when she finished fourth in the women's 10m air rifle final on Monday.

The women's air rifle trio of Ser, Martina Veloso and Cheng Jian Huan finished fourth in the team standings.

Next up for the men is the 25m centre fire pistol today.

Ser will compete in the 50m rifle three positions, an event in which she won a Commonwealth gold in July.

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This article was first published on Sep 26, 2014.
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