Baki’s performance leaves a lot to be desired
American and Chinese shooters have thoroughly amazed everyone with their improved skilful display by grabbing all three medals in the 10m Air Rifle event of Tokyo Olympics. However, Bangladesh's experienced shooter Abdullah Hel Baki failed to live up to the expectations of the shooting fraternity and ended up finishing 41st among 47 shooters at Asaka Shooting Range yesterday.
20-year-old William Shaner of the United States, who played only seven international tournaments at senior level from 2018 to 2021, bagged the gold with an Olympic record score of 251.6 out of 261.6 in the final round. The silver medal was won by 16-year-old Lihao Sheng of China with a score of 250.9 in his first ever international appearance through the Olympics. Haoran Yang of China secured bronze with a score of 229.4 after breaking the Olympic record in qualification round with a score of 630.2 out of 654.
Interestingly, Yang had underperformed in the Rio Olympic Games with a 31st finish among 50 shooters whereas Baki had stood in 25th position with a score of 621.2 but this time the 31-year-old could not match neither the position nor the score of Rio Olympics.
Before leaving the country, Baki had expressed his desire of displaying his own performance by transforming his practice session scores into the competition as he had been scoring in between 625 to 627 and often going beyond 630-mark.
However, the double silver medallist of Commonwealth Games, who already has the vast experience of playing more than 20 international tournaments, broke down once again at the international stage. When it comes to big occasions, his questionable mental strength has been a recurring theme of his career so far.
"Actually I have nothing to say about his performance in Tokyo because he got off to a fine start in every series but failed to carry the momentum in the latter parts and during which he scored below 10 in almost twice in every series. So, it was not possible to recover from those low scores in the end," coach Golam Shafiuddin Shiplu told The Daily Star from Japan.
"I asked Baki about those shots and he had no explanation after having scored well in yesterday's training to make 52.5 and 52.5 in every five shots," Shiplu added.
"I wanted him to replicate his own performance but it didn't happen. Whatever he scored in the training doesn't matter if he can't carry it into the competition and today's performance showed he hasn't improved."