SINGAPORE — When the dust finally settled at the National Shooting Centre today (June 12), the scoreboard showed a final score of 116 points each for Choo Choon Seng and Mohd Zain Amat, and 111 for Lin Hejun.

It meant the trio had totalled 343 points to win the men’s trap event for Singapore and secure record-extending 70th gold medal for the Republic at the 28th SEA Games, and their first gold medal in a trap shooting event at the biennial meet since the 2007 Games in Thailand,

It also meant Singapore’s shooting team finished the competition with five gold, nine silver and seven bronze medals, just one gold shy of the Singapore Shooting Association’s (SSA) six-gold medal target.

But for Singapore Shooting Association (SSA) president Michael Vaz is hoping Singapore’s 70th gold medal of the 28th SEA Games will also signal a revival of fortunes in the clay shooting events here.

“Our two young shooters (Low) Jiang Hao and Hejun have done well and it’s their first Games, and we have several coming up,” said Vaz, himself a former national shooter.

“With any events in the last few years, trap shooting had died as they were no major competitions and nobody was training. But now we have the Asian Clay Shooting Federation moving their secretariat to Singapore, and we will have one event here in December every year.”

Clay shooting events had once been a regular source of medals for Singapore at major Games, and boasted the likes of Asian Games bronze medallist Chng Seng Mok and multiple Olympian Lee Wung Yew, who has since retired competitively.

But a shift in focus from the shotgun events, coupled with its omission from the past three SEA Games, contributed to its recent decline here. However, the form of veterans Zain and Choo — the 2007 SEA Games men’s trap and double trap champions respectively — and Lin, which saw them finish ahead of silver medallists Chen Seong Fook, Ng Beng Chong and Bernard Yeoh of Malaysia (329) and bronze medallists Eric Ang, Hagen Topacio and Miguel Laperal of the Philippines (324), gave Vaz cause for optimism.

Zain, who also added an individual trap bronze after beating Ang 13-10 in a shootout 13-10, said: “The team did really well to win this by over 10 points, and credit goes to our young one (Lin).”

Named the “man of the moment” by his team-mates, Games debutant Lin was happy to win his first gold at any major competition.

“This SEA Games has been great as I’ve seen other shooters who are more experienced and it’s been really inspirational. Choo’s and Zain’s experience really helped,” he said.

Thailand topped the SEA Games shooting competition with 14 gold, seven silver and three bronze medals, followed by Singapore (5-9-7) and Vietnam (4-1-5). While he was happy with the performance of the clay shooters, Vaz felt the precision pistol and rifle shooters could have done better.

Former Commonwealth Games champion Jasmine Ser, who finished the 28th SEA Games with one gold, one silver and three bronze medals, was not happy with her overall form.

She said: “I should be happy because this is probably the best I’ve done (in terms of medals) at the SEA Games. But there is room for improvement and I’ll be working towards that.”
 

Correction: In a previous version of this article, we incorrectly referred to Lin Hejun as Lim Hejun. This has been corrected and we apologise for the error.