Stiff competition on opening day

In quest of finding new shooters for long-term training to materialise 'vision 2020', the Hamidur Rahman 2nd National Youth Shooting Championship got underway at the National Shooting Complex in Gulshan, with the participants competing neck-and-neck in all three events decided yesterday.

There were intense competition among gold and silver winners in all three events – 10m air pistol (boys), 10m air pistol (girls) and 10m air rifle (girls) before eventually the students of BKSP emerged on top in all three events.

Pias Hossain of BKSP faced stiff challenge from Rahim Mia of Army Shooting Association before winning the 10m air pistol gold with a score of 181 points, just one more than Rahim while Kawsar Ali of Pabna Rifles Club won the bronze with 159 points.

In the girls' 10m air pistol, Nilufa Yasmin of BKSP put behind her teammate Turing Dewang scoring 179 points, one more than Turing while Marzan Akter of Army Shooting Association had to be content with a bronze medal with 155 points.

In the girl's 10m air rifle event, Jui Chakma of BKSP won the gold with a score of 196.9 points while Amira Hamid of Gulshan Shooting Club and Mayeda Momtahina of Army grabbed silver and bronze medals with 195.6 and 177 points respectively.

“We have been trying to revive the pistol events as we haven't had good results at international level for some time. We have brought a foreign coach for pistol events in a bid to make the events popular among the shooters and we need time to revive it,” Bangladesh Shooting Sports Federation's general secretary Intekhabul Hamid told reporters.

“We will start a training camp after the completion of youth championship as we have kept our sights on Tokyo Olympics. We have already selected two youth shooters for the long-term training and we will also pick eight shooters – four girls and as many boys -- from this championship and train them to keep the pipeline active for the senior team,” added Hamid.