RI shooters seek better ranking
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is set to better its position from 12th to 10th at the Asian Shooting Championships, due to be opened today at the Senayan shooting range.
Tomorrow will be the competitions' first day, featuring the men's free pistol and the women's air rifle finals. Edi Sudrajat is scheduled to officially open the championships.
Edi, the outgoing chairman of the Asian Shooting Confederation, is the chairman of the Indonesian Target Shooting and Hunting Association (Perbakin), as well as Minister of Defense and Security. He will be replaced as shooting confederation chairman by Malaysia's Allay Ong after the end of the championships.
"Indonesia was ranked 12th after the previous Asian Shooting Championship in Beijing in 1991. We just want to move at least two steps better at these Jakarta championships," Anthony Sunarjo, Perbakin secretary-general said yesterday.
Indonesia is fielding 55 athletes, but is relying on its trio of Sarmunah, Sylvia S. and Supadmi in the women's double trap 120 targets event. They finished second behind China's Wang Y., Zhang Y. and Zhang S. at the Asian Clay Shooting Championships in Chengdu, China, from July 3 to July 11.
Up until yesterday, 17 teams from 17 countries had arrived here for the championships. They include New Zealand, Australia, China, South Korea, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
However, many of them have not yet paid the entry fees. "Some of them did not bring enough money. Thus, we have to wait for money to be transferred from their banks," said one of the organizers. The organizing committee charges entry fees of US$35 per individual per event and US$75 per team per event. It demands a further $15 as a drug-check fee.
To make matters worse, some countries which had made preliminary registration but which had not confirmed their participation suddenly arrived here without prior notice. As a result, visas had to be issued to them on arrival, Sunarjo said.
"This caused some immigration problems involving their possession of guns, pistols and rifles. They should have notified us at least 30 days before. We're very busy, but some Middle Eastern officials asked us to accompany them buying caps. Everything seems to be out of control here," said an irritated Sunarjo.
Yet, everything seems to be ready at the shooting range. Yesterday, two software engineers from Sius AG, a Swiss supplier of shooting electronics, were seen preparing the latest computerized ranking-scoring system, to be used for the finals.
The system does both the scoring as well as the ranking, prints the results and projects them on a wide screen. (arf)