Competitors test their mettle in metal-plate shootout at Fazza Championship for Saktoun Rifle Shooting

Participants whittled down from 200 to just 24 ahead of today’s (Saturday’s) final of team tournament.

Dubai, January 24, 2016 – The penultimate day of action at the Fazza Championship for Saktoun Rifle Shooting, which is organised and supervised by the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Heritage Center (HHC), saw 200 competitors battle it out in a team tournament on Friday for a much-prized place in today’s (Saturday’s) final.

Stationary positions made way for speedy paces yesterday (Friday) as – in a change of tack from the previous two days – pairs of participants had to run 20 metres to their two already set-up rifles, load them and then hit five metallic plates 50 metres away  on the range.

A staggering time of just seven seconds was recorded for the second year in succession too as the teams looked to navigate their way through three tough qualifying rounds to today’s (Saturday’s) climactic, 12-strong showdown.

However, organisers intend to tinker with the target for the final – and in the future – to make the task at hand considerably more difficult.

Mohammed Abdullah Bin Dalmook, Director of Corporate Support at the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Heritage Center (HHC), commented: “We’re going to introduce a new configuration for the five plates. We won’t have them lined up in a straight formation, but in a circle. It will be a different – and even tougher – way of shooting. The best recorded time last year was seven seconds and – this time around – another team, who came third in 2015, have also clocked seven seconds. We’ve reached seven seconds and we don’t want to stay on the same level because then all you will have is two good shooters that are very fast and they will always win. You always need to continually upgrade the competition and make it difficult. It (the new target) has already been tested and it is very difficult.”

He added: “Saktoun rifle shooting is already popular, but we are making it even more so. We have shooters from Saudi Arabia – among other nations – here, so we’re starting to see different nationalities begin to participate. These competitors didn’t start training for this tournament only last month either; they’ve been training – to win – ever since last year’s event.”

Mohammed Obaid Al Muhairi, the Head of the Organising Committee of the Fazza Championship for Saktoun Rifle Shooting, added: “7.67s is actually a very good time, but we hope to better it in the final and I think we will because we will have the best 12 teams competing there on Saturday.

“We will have a new type of target. It’s like a star and it needed to be different because we have very good shooters and they’ve already achieved very fast times on this (horizontal/straight) target. We’ve had this target for the last seven years and now we’re going to change it to increase the difficulty level for all of the 24 finalists.”

Ali Saeed Salem Al Kaabi, from the UAE, and his brother Saif were one of the teams that participated in today’s metal-plate shooting.

“Rifle shooting, falconry and camel riding are the three most significant sports in terms of our heritage and I encourage my fellow Emiratis to practise the rifle shooting more,” stated Ali, who has participated in the Fazza Championship for Saktoun Rifle Shooting ever since its inaugural edition.

“I’d like to see more Emiratis at the Fazza Championship for Saktoun Rifle Shooting and there is no reason why we shouldn’t have more participating. We should represent our country in the best way possible and greater participation from the nationals here would invariably help elevate the championship.”

Abdullah bin Saeed Al Dirre’e, from Oman, explained: “Rifle shooting is a hereditary sport in Oman and it has been passed down from generation to generation for many years. We actually customise our rifles according to what we find most comfortable and our vision, particularly when it comes to the weaver ring; we hand-make the rings for our rifles to give us better precision. We take rifle shooting very seriously in Oman.”

As well as the finals of this particular competition, the respective tournaments for the U17 boys, U17 girls, men and women will all be concluded on Saturday (Today).