Skeet team blows final thrust at gold

BANGKOK – The gold medal proved to be elusive to the very end for the Philippine shooting team here.

The men’s skeet shooters had a disastrous finish, missing the gold in both the team and individual plays as Team Philippines was shut out in the hunt for top honors in the 24th SEA Games shooting competitions.

Paul Brian Rosario, Patricio Bernardo and Gabriel Tong succumbed  under tremendous championship pressure, pooling together only 127 in the final 50 targets to settle for the silver medal  behind the Thais in the team contest.

Unable to sustain the momentum of their 143 aggregate in the first two rounds, the RP trio totaled only 334 birds, eight behind the winning score of 342 by the Thai team of Hatchaichukiat Jiranunt, Phasee Pitipoon and Varadhampinich Krisada.

Rosario, double-gold medalist in Manila in 2005, advanced to the six-man individual final as the third best shooter in the qualifying round with 113, but faltered in the medal play, winding up tied for fifth with 131.

Bernardo, the individual skeet champion in 1999 in Brunei, figured in a four-man shoot off for the last three slots in the final. Alas, the 56-year-old veteran campaigner was the one booted out in the shootoff.

Hatchaichukiat went on to win the individual gold with 138 points and the Thais easily retained the overall championship in the shooting competition with 14 gold medals.

Singapore made big improvement from fifth the last time to second overall with eight gold medals, the bulk of which coming from their Chinese recruits.

Vietnam cornered seven golds, Malaysia and Myanmar two each while the Philippines had no gold to show, failing miserably in its bid to at least match its 3-3-2 gold-silver-bronze haul in 2005.

The RP shooters are going home with only three silvers and one bronze, a woeful performance that may compel shooting  officials to lay down a program to give the sport a renewed boost.

“The Thais benefited from their home court advantage.

They’re so familiar with the layout and the wind direction,” said RP skeet team manager Pol Rosario.

“The Thais were very careful in selecting their range and I had a strong feeling they really prepared for us here,” said Bernardo.

Tied with the Filipinos after the first three rounds Sunday, the Thais seized a four-bird lead after the fourth round with Hatchaichukiat firing a 24, Phasee a 23 and Varadhampinich a 22.

The eventual team champion made it a convincing eight-bird triumph with a closing 66 to the Filipinos’ 62.

Hatchaichukiat had a line of 23-24-23-24-23, Varadhampinich 22-23-25-22-22 and Phasee 22-22-2323-21. Hatchaichukiat and Varadhampinich made it a gold-silver finish for the Thais in the individual play.

Rosario was third best in the qualifying with 25-23-21-24-20 but he struggled in the final with 18.

The lanky shooter from Malabon, a business management graduate at Thames University – an international school at the Fort, missed the very first bird in the final.

He missed two targets in the fourth station and had four more misses in the last three of eight stations to the disappointment of a handy Filipino crowd.