RI shooters seek better ranking
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)