As curtains were down for the 11th Asian Shooting Championships and the Chinese shooting team busy packing for their home-bound journey, two more gold medals obtained on Wednesday made their luggage heavier.

Despite his fatigue after winning men's 50-meter rifle prone event on Monday, 33-year-old Jia Zhanbo dominated the shooting range again by snatching the gold of the men's 50-meter rifle three positions with 1,266.3 points.

The Olympic champion who just bestowed his team an Olympic quota place in 50-meter rifle prone headed the finalists list by achieving 1,169 points in the qualification round, three points ahead of the second placer South Korean Park Bong Duk, and four points above his teammate Zhang Lei and Indian shooter Sanjeev Rajput.

In the 10-shot final, he didn't do well in the first three shot by scoring two 8.9 points and a 10.0, but managed to adjust his state to sent the following six bullets within the ten-point circle.

Although in the last shot, Jia just achieved a startling 7.4 points, but all is well that ends well and he eventually outshot the runner-up with 2.5 points.

Zhang Lei finished as the third with 1,263.2 points.

Their performances lifted the Chinese team to the championship of the team event and marked a good ending for the fruitful red-clad squad, whose number of gold medals has reached 39.

"The final started before the gauge of my rifle was properly tuned," Jia said in explaining his bad start, "but in the last shot, I made a mistake by failing to shoot out the bullet, which disrupted the rhythm of my performance."

"I should have scored at least one point higher," said the regretful champion.

"His performance in the qualification is good. Although the last shot was less than satisfactory, Jia has drawn a good conclusion for our team in the championships," noted Wang Yifu, head coach of the Chinese national shooting team.
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In men's skeet event, although Chinese shooter Qu Ridong failed to claim the champion title, his prowess in the final was also impressive.

The 39-year-old athlete who shot down the Olympic ticket of the event at the Qingyuan World Shotgun Championships collected the same score of 117 with Asian Games runner-up Saeed Almaktoum from the United Arab Emirates in the qualification round.

The pair stunned audiences by hitting all the targets to finish as 142 hits despite the wind, but Qu managed to beat his counterpart in the shoot-off to gain the silver. Almaktoum settled for a bronze.

"I shouldn't have missed twice in the 6th firing point, the central one, in the qualification round," said Qu. "Anyway, I am quite satisfied with my performance today, which shows my real capability."
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"The shoot-off is like a penalty, and Qu proved himself a good shooter," Almaktoum said.

The gold medal was nipped by Abdullah Alrashidi, shooter from the host country of Kuwait, with 143 hits.

(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2007)