Can Baqi bring shooting medal from South Korea
Commonwealth Games silver medallist in 10 meters Air Rifle event Abdullah Hel Baqi said that he would try his best to secure a medal in this event of the 17th Asian Games beginning in South Korea from September 14. The job is very hard because the Asian Games are ahead of the Commonwealth Games in most of the events including shooting.
The 24-year-old shooter from Gazipur, who qualified for the eight-man final round after finishing fifth in the qualification with 620 points, scored 202.1 out of 218 in the final shoot-off, 3.2 points less than gold-medal winner India’s Bindra.
Shooting is the only discipline that has given Bangladesh three gold medals in the Commonwealth Games. The other three accomplished shooters are Atiqur Rahman, Abdus Sattar Nini and Asif Hossain. They are now forgotten heroes.
In the Asian Games, there will be the Chinese and the South Koreans who are of world class to make the Abdullah Hel Baqi’s journey extremely cumbersome. Before leaving Dhaka for Seoul, the Bangladesh shooters including Baqi must admit the reality and say, “we shall try our best.”
Like the past, China will become overall champions again but with narrow margin because the hosts South Korean Olympic Association worked calculative for long how to catch the Chinese.
Ameer Hamzah
Dhaka
