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West Indies Fullbore Shooting C/ships Short Range Match…Jamaica dethrones Guyana
By Franklin Wilson in Barbados
Jamaica is the new Short Range Fullbore Kings of the Caribbean having dethroned Guyana at the Paragon Ranges yesterday when the West Indies Fullbore Shooting Council 2013 Championships ended yesterday with the Short Range Match.
Guyana, winners of the Long Range Match on Wednesday and the Individual Competition (Lennox Braithwaite) went into the Short Range match confident of retaining the trophy but it was the team from Reggae Island that prevailed at the end of the day.
Guyana, in the past 10 years or so has been the team to beat and this year was no different, as it turned out, like in Antigua and Barbuda in 2011, the Guyana team eased away from victory to
The victorious Jamaica Fullbore Rifle Shooting Team in a happy mood after winning the 2013 West Indies Fullbore Shooting Council Short Range Championship.
defeat owing to some inconsistent shooting.
The team from the Land of Many Waters lost the trophy by a mere 13 points to Jamaica, 1103 (68Vs) to 1116 (58Vs) with Trinidad and Tobago taking the third place having accumulated 1090 points (68Vs), followed by Antigua and Barbuda 1036 Points (34Vs) and host nation Barbados bringing up the rear with 1013 Points (33Vs).
While Guyana lost the Short Range trophy, Captain Mahendra Persaud who shot the only possible on the day at the 500 Yards Range (50.004) won the Wogart Trophy, the most coveted Individual prize of the Short Range match by accumulating the most points, 145 and 10Vs.
Unlike the Long Range match, it was decided and agreed that all the countries (Caribbean & visitors) would shoot at the same time, two persons at a time which meant that everyone would have shot in the same conditions.
The Guyanese, came into yesterday’s match confident but not complacent after their hard fought win the previous day in the Long Range match to retain the Milex Cup.
While Guyana had a standby shooter, the Jamaicans did not have that option according to their Captain, the veteran John Nelson, they only had the required 8-members to shoot so they were hoping and praying that every member would have been healthy to hit the target coming up against old rivals Guyana, which they knew, was the team to beat.
After the first range – 300 Yards – Jamaica held a slight one point advantage, 371 to 370, with both nations having the same amount of Vs, 23. At the 500 Yards Range it was still close to call with Guyana nosing ahead 376 points to Jamaica’s 374 to lead by a nerve racking one point, 746 to 745.
So it was now down to the final range with a straight fight between the two arch rivals as the other countries were some way back.
At the 600 Yards Range, inconsistent shooting by the Guyanese put paid to their chances of retaining the trophy as they only managed 357 points, while Jamaica, maintaining their consistency, shot their way to 371 points to with overall, 1116 to 1103, a difference of 13 points.
Captain Persaud noted that his charges tried their best but Jamaica was the better and more focused team on the day and congratulations are in order for the boys from Reggae land.
“Obviously I am disappointed that we had to give up the Short Range title but that’s how it goes sometimes. We tried our best but came up short. The conditions were not helpful and I can say that it remained a challenge through the days that we have been here, the low scores can attest to that.
That said however, we cannot take anything away from the Jamaican’s, they did the job so we now have to focus on next year’s competition which would be held in Jamaica, we will be back, rest assured.”
Jamaica’s Captain, John Nelson, speaking with Kaieteur Sport summed up his team’s performance as, “Absolutely Ecstatic”, especially from the standpoint of just having 8-members available.
“We have trained quite hard for it, since January in fact and we are very pleased that we were able to pull it off today. We last won it in Antigua in 2007 I think it was.”
The Jamaicans, he said studied the Guyanese team and were able to exploit their weak areas.
“We know that Guyana has for sure, four of the best rifle shooters in the Caribbean, but we are also satisfied that their team falls away quite dramatically towards the last two or three shooters and we’ve always felt that our team has more balance. So if we were able to maintain a balance today which we did at all ranges; we did not have a bad range even though they were not great ranges, but we prevailed.”
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