The big guns of China fell silent on Tuesday as they ended the Asian Game shooting events with only onegold.
China only claimed the team's title of men's 25m standard pistol event, but the remaining three golds were split by Qatar and Thailand.
It was a day of glory for Qatari clay-pigeon shooters when theyclaimed both the team's and individual golds of men's skeet.
Masoud Hamad, Nasser Al-attiya and Ahmed Al-Kuwari totaled 360 hits to beat Kazakhstan's 355 hits and claimed the team's title, breaking the Asian record by one hit. The former record was set byKuwait at the world championships in 1999.
The Chinese team of Jin Di, Chen Dong and Zhang Kaiyan scored 352 hits to win the bronze medal.
In the following finals, Masoud Hamad of Qatar kept a stable performance to retain the gold, while Chinese Jin Di, who scored asame 122 hits with Masoud, missed three targets and placed second.Alexei Ponomarev from Kazakhstan finished a perfect 25 hits, but only won the bronze medal with a total of 143 hits.
In the men's 25 meter standard pistol, Chinese trio Liu Guohui,Liu Yadong and Jin Yongde scored 1,724 points in the team's event to grab the only gold for China. South Korea placed second with 3points less, both of them broke the Asian record of 1,719 set by China in the Beijing Asian Games in 1990. DPR Korea won the bronzewith 1,712 points.
The individual title went to Opas Ruengpanyawut of Thailand, who scored 579 points, two points higher than Liu Guohui to clinchthe first gold medal for his country in the Asiad shooting.
"China is not very strong at the men's standard pistol and skeet events, we are glad that we clinched the standard pistol title since it is an unexpected gold," Chinese head coach Xu Haifeng said.
China totaled 27 golds, 16 silvers and 7 bronze medals during the seven-day tournament.
"Our shooters raised their aims in the Asiad," said Xu. "We expected to win 18 golds before the games but made it 27.
"What made me excited was that our shooters broke three world records. They did an Olympic-level performance."
(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2002)
