THE top marksmen in the Caribbean returned home Monday night and were met by a cheering welcoming party which consisted of Director of Sport Neil Kumar, head coach of the team and Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Slowe, along with other members of the Guyana National Rifle Association’s executive body and well-wishers. The national team asserted their dominance over the rest of the Caribbean with their commanding victory at the recently concluded West Indies Full Bore Shooting Council’s Short Range Team Championship and by so doing, wrote history by being the first team not only to win four consecutive titles but also to hold the score as the first Guyanese team to win in Barbados.
In speaking with Slowe at the Cheddi International Airport Monday night, Chronicle Sport understood the head coach’s point-of-view on the team’s performance, “they did what we expected to do, I’m glad to see that all of the training is successful and I’m satisfied to coach a winning team,” he said.
He continued by saying that the results were due to the excellent preparation that the team went through. Slowe mentioned that they did their regular weekend practices at the range at Timehri and he also shed light on the fact that the practices were carried out with good quality ammunition. This was important since rifle shooting is a precision sport.
“At the beginning of the year we started our preparations in earnest, we did our weekend shoot and we were able to practise with good quality ammunition.”
Like any good tactician, Slowe also revealed that he was wary of the competition and therefore they did not make the mistake of underestimating any of the other teams despite the fact that he felt that the ability of the local shooters was peaking. When asked about the progression of the team over the four consecutive victories, Slowe replied, “We maintained the core of the team over the four years with the exception of a few minor changes. The shooters are performing and we didn’t want to change a good squad.”
The head coach is of the opinion that due to the dedication and commitment of the shooters they were able to lift their game to another level. He noted a show of their dedication in that they spared no cost in getting the best equipment for their area of expertise. The only caveat identified was the team’s substandard performance at the 300 yards range where they dropped 23 points, which according to Slowe is bad by their standards and he attributed that to unsettled nerves at the start of the contest.
Captain of the team, Mahendra Persaud, also consented to a few comments after touching down and he related that he is also extremely satisfied. He said that the team trained hard and did a lot of fine-tuning over the past few weeks and shot well on the day. Persaud said that he was confident in the shooters’ ability going into the competition and despite their stumbling at the 300 yard range, which they won regardless, they excelled at 500 yards and moved further away from their challengers by the completion of the 600 yard range.
He made it expressly clear that it was a team effort and everybody contributed as this was also the first time that the entire team shot above 140 points in the 150-point scoring range.