S. Korea steals China's thunder in shooting meet

JAKARTA (JP): South Korea produced a superb but belated fightback yesterday, tainting China's victory celebrations on the closing day of the 8th Asian Shooting Championships here.

The all-conquering Chinese needed a face-saving win from Meng Gang in the men's center fire pistol after South Korea romped home with five golds and Kuwait shot to a golden double in the men's skeet on the most frenetic day of the week-long competition.

Despite the gold medal drought, China remained untouched, with 21 golds, 14 silvers and seven bronzes. South Korea came a distant second with 10 golds, seven silvers and 12 bronzes, leaving third-finisher Japan far behind with two golds, four silvers and six bronzes.

Indonesia finished the quadrennial shooting meet with a consoling bronze in the newly-introduced women's running target. With two bronzes in hand, however, host Indonesia did not move from the 12th place it achieved in the previous meet in Beijing.

No records fell yesterday, taking the new Asian marks' tally to six. The new records of the championship included a world- equaling mark set by Zhang Bing in the men's trap.

The men's trio of Lee Ki-choon, Park Byung-taek and Lee Sang- hak opened South Korea's startling comeback yesterday when they compiled a total score of 1,735 to win the team center fire pistol. China, spearheaded by Meng, managed to finish only third, behind Kazakhstan.

Kong Hyun-ah inspired the South Korean women to sweep the two golds offered in the small bore standard rifle three positions. Earlier, the South Korean female shooters ruled the roost in the running target.

Lucky

"It's a lucky day for our team. We did not expect to win that many," South Korean head coach Kim Il-hwan said. "I'm satisfied with the outcome, which indicates that we are much-improved, compared with our performance four years ago," he added.

South Korea managed only a tiny collection of four golds in 1991.

"Winning 10 golds is enough. China remains beyond our grasp, simply because they have millions of shooters," Kim said. "We now hope to do better in the Olympic Games in Atlanta next year."

South Korea had four more Olympic qualifiers, in addition to the other nine who had assured themselves of their Olympic berths in previous tournaments.

The championship here also saw 23 shooters from China, Japan, Chinese Taipei, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, India and Iraq secure their tickets to Atlanta. There are only 356 quota places for the 1996 Olympics.

Indonesia has failed to book any berth, but the national shooting governing body will request a wild-card entry for Aurora Maris, who set new national women's air rifle match record of 392 on the opening day of competition last week.

Chairman of the body, Edi Sudradjat, told a press conference prior to the closing ceremony that Indonesian shooters had done their best.

"At least we now have a more optimistic prediction for the Southeast Asian Games in December," he said. "Our athletes need only to maintain their motivation to excel," he added. Indonesia has set a minimum target of five of the 34 golds at stake in the 18th SEA Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand. (amd)

Medals tally

G S B 1. China 21 14 7 2. South Korea 10 7 12 3. Japan 2 4 6 4. Kuwait 2 0 0 5. Kazakhstan 1 5 3 6. Mongolia 1 2 0 7. India 1 1 2 8. Kyrgystan 0 2 0 9. Thailand 0 1 1 10. Uzbekistan 0 1 0 11. Qatar 0 1 0 12. Indonesia 0 0 2 13. Chinese Taipei 0 0 2 14. Vietnam 0 0 1 15. Iran 0 0 1 16. Iraq 0 0 1