Shakil brings Bangladesh's second silver

SA Games gold medallist Shakil Ahmed brought more laurels to the national after bagging Bangladesh's second silver medal at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games yesterday.

The 23-year-old bagged a silver in the 50m air pistol event at the Belmont Shooting Center in Brisbane.

Bangladesh's medal hopes lay mostly with the air rifle shooters, who had won at least one medal either in individual or team events in the last four editions. Prolific shooter Abdullah Hel Baki did not disappoint, delivering the country's first silver in these Games in the air rifle event on April 8 while Ummey Zakia Sultana went close to winning a second medal in the women's air rifle event.

However, there have hardly been any hopes from the air pistol shooters. Bangladesh last triumph in pistol events, including a gold, came at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. Shakil, who moved into the final with a fourth-place finish in qualification, finally broke the 28-year deadlock in pistol events by grabbing a silver medal.

The youngster, who was unearthed in the 2016 South Asian Games, shattered his SA Games scoring of 187.6 and hit 202.2 in the final, finishing behind Australia's Daniel Repacholi, who fired a Games record 227.2 to clinch gold. Indian Om Mitharval bagged bronze with 201.1 points.

The Bangladesh Army shooter though frustrated with a sixth-place finish in his pet event, 10m air pistol.

Shakil fought neck-to-neck with the others till the 14th shot before Repacholi went beyond reach, but he successfully staved off Mitharval in the penultimate round.

"It is a really good feeling to win a medal from this stage," Shakil told reporters after coming out of the shooting line. "Rather than winning a medal, my target was to maintain my scores from training. I have done what I wanted to do in the qualification and final rounds because I scored what I shot during practice," said Shakil.

"There was no medal from the pistol event in the SA Games for a long time and I won the gold medal in the 2016 edition of SA Games. Since then I targeted the Commonwealth Games to do something and took good preparation at home," said Shakil.

After setting Vision 2020 in December 2016, the Bangladesh Shooting Sport Federation (BSSF) took the initiative by appointing Montenegrin pistol coach Marko Sokic.

“This was not just a lucky win or something, this is what we were working towards and I strongly believed that Shakil could do it. The pistol shooters finally showed something," Sokic said. "I was just hoping that it would be a nice day, not so much wind. I trained him [Shakil] hard to prepare him to deal with these things and it was good that he was a quick learner. He is a teachable boy and he can do a lot."