Without the country's leading shooter Asif Hossain Khan, the hosts are looking forward to gain experience when the 5th South Asian Shooting Championship will be officially opened at the BKSP shooting range tomorrow.
The main competition, involving favourites India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and hosts Bangladesh, however will get underway on July 5 at the sports institute venue, the alternative range was chosen as the National Shooting Federation (NSF)'s own venue in Gulshan is under expansion work.
"Nepal didn't enter their name because of political unrest in their country while the Maldives did not give any reasons whilst Afghanistan has no shooting federation in their country," informed NSF general secretary Ishtiaque Ahmed at a press conference at the National Sports Council (NSC) conference room yesterday.
Asif is now in Germany for higher training and the NSF was not ready to disrupt the expensive training halfway rather they are thinking big with the Commonwealth gold medallist shooter.
"He (Asif) is a rare talent in our country. In the last championship in Pakistan we got two gold medals because of him but still we believe that it would be unwise to hamper his training schedule.
"We spent huge amount of money to arrange this high-profile training and we talked to his German coach who also suggested not to disturb him ahead of the Islamic Solidarity game in Iran in October," said Ishtiaque.
He also said that this tournament has created a huge opportunity for the promising shooters in the country to gain experience ahead of the next South Asian Games in Dhaka and participate with the quality Indian shooters despite the fact that the 31-member Indian contingent did not include their two celebrated shooters -- Beijing Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang.
"India is the top favourite in the weeklong competition and we believe that our promising shooters are fortunate enough to compete with the quality Indian shooters as almost all the Indian shooters took part in the world shooting competition in Munich last month," hoped Ishtiaque.
"Actually our main focus is on the next Asian Games and definitely we want to do something in the 2012 Olympic in England," he added.
NSF has fixed a budget of Tk 39 lakhs for the tournament and will bear all the expenses from its own coffer.
"We tried our best to get a sponsor for the tournament but unfortunately we didn't get any response from any corporate house," he said.
EVENT SCHEDULE
July 5: 50m pistol and 10m air rifle (men's).
July 6: 50m rifle prone (men's), 25m pistol (women's), 10m air rifle (women's).
July 7: 50m rifle prone (women's), 10m air pistol (men's), skeet 75 shot competition.
July 8: 50m rifle 3x40 (men's), 25m standard pistol (men's), 10m air pistol (women's) and skeet 50 shot.
July 9: 50m rifle 3x20 (women's).
Source: thedailystar.net
