Madushanka, Ranasinghe and Dharmaratne compete as inaugural Online Asian Shooting Championship commences

Top three clay target shooters of NSSF Skeet Open 2021 Championship namely Prasad Madushanka, Sandakelum Ranasinghe and Shankar Dharmaratne commenced the first round of the inaugural Online Asian Shooting Championship at Payagala on Friday.

The trio who qualified for the event by becoming the top three finishers of the recently conducted NSSF Skeet Open 2021, fired the first half of the allotted number of shots yesterday and will return today to complete the event.

They are among hundreds of others competing from their respective countries in Asia. With their performances monitored in real time by the Kuwait based organisers the local authorities said it was hard to compare the performances.

“This is the first time that an Asian event is conducted here. The Asian Shooting Sport Federation will release the official result tomorrow. I can say that our shooters did well,” said  Pradeep Edirisinghe, the secretary of the National Shooting Sport Federation (NSSF) of Sri Lanka.

The three competitors who represent Sri Lanka at this first Asian Online event were picked from the NSSF Skeet Open Championship, which concluded last weekend at the Clay Target Shooting Club of Colombo’s shooting range at Payagala.

Prasad Madushanka from Sri Lanka Air Force emerged the champion in the Open Category, securing the gold medal while his teammate Sandakelum Ranasinghe was placed second, and clinched the silver medal. Shankar Dharmaratne of Clay Target Shooting Club of Colombo (CTSCC) finished third to claim  the bronze medal.

Though three skeet shooters qualified from the shotgun events, Sri Lanka could not qualify shooters for the 10m Air Rifle and 10m Air Pistol events as none of the local shooters managed to reach the minimum qualifying standards set by the organisers in Kuwait. (RF)