KARACHI: Chief of the Air Staff, Sohail Aman on Saturday approved the holding of CAS Shooting Championship and development of a shooting range for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).
“The PAF was requested to hold a bi-annual shooting championship so that the shooters can have two major events in a year. I approve this,” said Sohail at the closing ceremony of 23rd National Shooting Championship here at PN Karsaz range.
He added that the other request was to have a shooting range for the Air Force.
“I approve this as well. The sport of shooting needs special attention and our shooters have great potential,” he said.
The National Shooting Championship was concluded on Saturday with the last event of Big Bore (professional). In the individual category of the event, Navy’s Uzair Ahmed won gold, Sindh’s Mohammad Azeem won silver, while Army’s Amir Butt won bronze.
In the team category, Navy won gold, Army won silver and Sindh won bronze medal.
According to the medals’ tally at the end of the championship, Navy won 32 gold, 17 silver and 13 bronze medals; Army secured eight gold, 17 silver and 10 bronze medals; PAF claimed five silver and nine bronze medals; HEC clinched three bronze medals; Sindh bagged one gold, two silver and three bronze medals; Balochistan won two bronze medals; and Punjab sealed one bronze medal. FRA and Sindh Police could not win any medals.
Navy’s MH Tabassum was declared the best shooter of the event after winning five gold (two in standard pistol, two in rapid fire pistol, and one in centre fire pistol) and one silver (in team category).
“I feel honored to have won this award so many times,” said Tabassum, while talking to ‘The News’.
Tabassum, who got the award for best shooter in Colombo back in 2006 after winning five gold and one silver medal, said that his aim now is to represent the country in Olympics.
“I won silver medals at SAF Games 2016 but unfortunately did not achieve MQS for Rio but I am hopeful of winning a quota place for the next Olympics,” said Tabassum.
Meanwhile, Navy’s shooters made seven new national records during the week-long championship in which 300 athletes from across the country participated in 22 team and individual events in four categories.
In air rifle event, Zeeshan Shakir set a record with the score of 204.1 points; in prone rifle event, Nazish Khan scored 608.1 points; in team category of the said event, 1806 points were scored; in air rifle, Minhal Sohail scored 202.7 points.
In air pistol (women junior) team event, Navy scored 1074 points and in male junior team event, they scored 1669 points, while in air rifle team event (male junior), a record 1781.8 points were scored.
Another highlight of the championship was the participation of PAF’s women shooters for the first time.
“Ten girls participated in this event for the first time and they won one silver and two bronze medals,” said PAF’s team manager Inam.
He added that the reason why their women were not participating in shooting events was not having their own range.
“We are now focusing on this and are satisfied with the performance of our women shooters. We would provide them with more chances of participation in future,” he said.
He informed that the PAF is developing its own shooting range in Peshawar where 10, 25 and 50 metre targets are to be installed in rifle and pistol categories.