Perbakin to send rookie shooting team to SEAG

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Target Shooting and Hunting Association (Perbakin) has decided to field three rookie sharpshooters at the 18th Southeast Asian Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from Dec. 9 to Dec. 17.

The three join the other 17 sharpshooters whom the association has selected for the Chiang Mai SEA Games, Hariyanto Suprapto of Perbakin's target shooting division announced over the weekend.

The three, looking forward to their first SEA Games appearance, are Inca Ferry, who is to compete in the women's air rifle and Tri Hartiastuti and Vipta, both to be fielded in the women's air pistol.

Hariyanto said Perbakin has decided to field 20 out of the 28 athletes it groomed in its SEA Games-bound centralized training center.

Three of the twenty were chosen based on their performances at the recently-concluded Asian Shooting Championship, including Siswanto for the men's center fire pistol, Vipta in the women's air pistol and Yasmin Aroeb in the women's SMB standard rifle prone.

Although a number of athletes are qualified, Hariyanto said Perbakin was very selective in picking the right candidates for Chiang Mai. "We sent only those who we think have good chance of winning a gold medal."

Dropped

This means that they have to at least rank second in their events of specialty in Southeast Asia and show consistently good results during training, he said.

Markswoman Sylvia Gani, who broke a SEA Games record in Manila in 1991, is not included in Indonesia's SEA Games-bound shooting team. Someone else has outdone her, said Hariyanto, declining to name the other athlete.

"Our target is five gold medals even though the target set by the National Sports Council is three," he added.

Hariyanto warned that Chiang Mai's cold temperatures may be a stumbling block for the Indonesian sharpshooters: "I don't think we are accustomed to such climatic conditions."

From the results of the 8th Shooting Asian Championship, Hariyanto acknowledged that Thailand's sharpshooters are better than Indonesia's.

Double trap is the event in which Indonesia will have the most promising chance of winning a gold. In last year's Hiroshima Asian Games, Indonesia's markswomen finished fourth behind China, which took the gold and silver, and South Korea in that particular event.

However, Hariyanto warned that Thailand could suddenly cancel the event. (arf)