China, which swept the top places in last year’s shooting competition in the Doha Asian Games, outgunned their rivals to secure three of the four gold medals staked in the men’s, women’s and team trap events in the 2007 Asian Clay Shooting Championship at the PSC-PNSA Clay Shooting Range at the BuCor Compound, Muntinlupa City.
Zhu Mei, last year’s gold medalist in the ISSF World Cup in Texas and silver medalist in the Doha Asian Games, gunned down 86 birds to bag the gold medal in the women’s individual trap event.
Japanese Keiko Suzu grabbed the silver with an 83, one point better than Chinese shooter Ma Huike. Zhou Chao, also of China, lost by a bird in a shootout with Huike and settled for fourth.
Mei, 33, later teamed up with Ma and Zhou to give China the gold with a 1-2-3 finish in the team category of the women’s trap event.
Coming in fourth overall was Japan, courtesy of Suzu, while Eom Soyeon led Korea to fifth place.
On Friday, the Chinese added their third gold in the men’s team trap on the 332 of Li Yajun, Xu Hong Tao and Ly Yang. India was second (330) while Iran and Japan fnished third and fourth, respectively..
The Indians, however, stopped the Chinese juggernaut with a gold in men’s trap individual.
Manavjit Singh Sandhu, ranked No. 1 in the world and last year’s men’s trap champion in the Asian shootfest in Singapore, duplicated his feat with another scintillating performance here. He had 140 birds, one better than Almudafh Khaled of Kuwait. Singapore’s Lee Wang Yew won the bronze.
Local trap entries Jethro Dionisio, Eric Ang and Carlos Carag failed to make it past the preliminaries in the face of the world-class field in the tournament backed by the Philippine Sports Commission, Nike, Coca-Cola, PAGCOR and Renaissance Hotel.