Baki, Shakil eye improvement
Even though the Munich ISSF World Cup offers the 10m rifle and 10m pistol shooters four quota places for the 2010 Tokyo Olympics, Bangladeshi shooters are targeting individual improvement and qualifying for the final round of the competitions.
A nine-member Bangladesh contingent left for Germany yesterday morning to take part in the eight-day World Cup beginning from May 24 with three rifle shooters and as many pistol shooters taking part in the world event for the second time this year after having participated in the first one in Delhi in February.
Out of the six shooters, the focus is on rifle shooter Abdullah Hel Baki and pistol shooter Shakil Ahmed as the duo have gradually been improving their performance since grabbing silver medals in on the Commonwealth Games in April, 2018.
By scoring only 616 points in qualification round in the 10m air rifle event, Baki qualified for the eight-shooter final round and grabbed silver medal with a score of 244.7 points, just 0.3 points behind Australian gold medallist Dane Sampson.
The 29-year-old then scored 624.7 points in the qualification round at the Delhi ISSF World Cup in February but failed to secure a place in the eight-man final round where the eighth qualifier scored 628.4 points. Baki is now scoring higher than that and he wants to take his training score to the main competition in Munich.
“Preparation is more or less good and I am targeting to transfer my training scores [627 to 630] to the competition. It is possible to play in the final round even though competition has gradually intensified compared to the previous ones,” Baki said on Thursday.
Baki has been training under Shafiuddin Khan Shiplu, who has no coaching certificate, since Danish coach Klavs Christensen left Bangladesh following the Asian Games in October last year.
“I am facing problem during training. But I don’t want to dwell on it any further because we don’t get any solution despite talking about it again and again,” said a disappointed Baki.
However, Shakil has no such problems as he has been training under Korean coach Kim Il Young, who will accompany the shooter at the range.
“I am scoring 580 to 585 points in training and I want to maintain my training performance in the main competition,” said Shakil, who believes he can qualify for the final round if he can score 585 points in the qualification round.
Shakil had scored only 545 points in qualification round on way to winning the silver medal in the Commonwealth Games, but he had to be satisfied with a 62nd-place finish in the qualification round of the Delhi ISSF World Cup despite scoring 570 points. The last shooter, who qualified for eight-shooter final, had scored 583 points in Delhi.
Participating shooters: Abdullah Hel Baki, Robiul Islam, Rabbi Hasan Munna (rifle) and Shakil Ahmed, Piash Ahmed and Abdur Razzak (pistol).
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