Perbakin to send rookie shooting team to SEAG

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)