Masood hits gold as Saeed is fifth

Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum finished fifth in the Skeet Shooting competition at the 14th Asian Games yesterday as Qatar's Masood Hamad clinched the gold.

Masood's performance also helped Qatar win the team gold with an Asian Games record score of 360 points. Kazakhstan won the silver with 355 points and China the bronze with 352 points.

The UAE team comprising Sheikh Saeed (120 points), Mohammed Hussain Ali (113) and Saif bin Futtais (110) finished sixth with a score of 343.

Nine teams participated in the event. The Qatari team comprised Masood Hamad (122 points), Naser Al Attiya (121) and Ahmed Al Kuwari (117).

Sheikh Saeed was in contention for a medal in the morning when he followed up his good effort on Monday, wherein he was placed fourth with 120 points in qualification, with some high scores in his fourth and fifth attempts yesterday.

His scores read 25, 23, 25, 22 and 25 which took him to yesterday's finals (the top six shooters in the qualifications qualified for the finals).

Sheikh Saeed scored 22 points in the finals and he was equal with Naser Al Attiya of Qatar on 142 points. However, the Qatari won the fourth place following a shoot out between him, Sheikh Saeed and Kazakhstan's Sergey Yakshin. Al Atiya scored 12 points, Sheikh Saeed 11 and Sergey nine to finish in the sixth place.

Qatari Masood scored 24 points in the finals for a 146 point total.

Di Jin of China won the silver medal with a score of 22 points in the finals for a total of 144 points. Alexei Ponomarev of Kazakhstan clinched the bronze when he scored 24 points in the finals for a total of 143 points.

Naser Al Attiya, a member of the team, expressed his delight with Qatar's effort.

"The two golds are the first by Qatar in the Asian Games shooting. I am very happy with this great achievement. But not only did we win the gold we broke the Asian games record, which is unbelievable," said Al Atiya.

Ahmed Al Kuwari said the team performed at the highest level to achieve such a fantastic result.

"The competition was not easy, it was tough. We won against the best Asian shooters in the skeet. I thought we could win a medal if we work hard. We did our best in the finals which helped us to win the gold," he said.

The two Qatari shooters Al Attiya and Al Kuwari praised the efforts of Sheikh Saeed in the event. "Sheikh Saeed is a great champion, but this is shooting, one day you are a winner and the next day you are a loser," said Al Attiya.

He said the Korean referees were not fair on several occasions during the tournament. "They don't speak English and most of them are old. Yesterday they deducted one point from me which affected me in the finals."