Han Ting from China and Naser Meqlad from Kuwait struck gold today in Almaty, Kazakhstan at the Asian Shotgun Cup, winning women's and men's trap titles.
The Chinese athlete bounced back from missing her two opening targets, slowly creeping up the ranks to defeat Bahrain's Maryam Fadhel Abdulla Mejren Sulaiti for the gold; while Meqlad scored a perfect 50 in the men's trap final to secure victory.
Women's Trap Final
Han instantly faced pressure after missing her two opening shots, and found herself in elimination contention, but was spared by a perfect round five which saw Kholoud Hassan Al-Khalaf from Qatar leave the competition. Now just two points behind the lead with the leaders allowing errors to creep in, Han would miss just three targets for the rest of the final.
Shahad Al-Hawal from Kuwait missed three targets in the following series to finish fifth, with her sister Sarah placing fourth, while the early leader Aizhan Dosmagambetova from Kazakhstan scored a perfect five from five to remain in the competition after being on the brink of elimination.
Dosmagambetova would finish on a score of 31 - one behind the now-leaders Han and Bahrain's Maryam Fadhel Abdulla Mejren Sulaiti, who contested for gold.
Sulaiti was the first to blink, missing her fourth of ten shots between the pair. Han would open the door for the Bahraini when she missed on target 47, but she could not capitalise on this. Han would score as Sulaiti missed consecutively in two rounds, showing the pressure had gotten to the 29-year-old. Han finished on a score of 41 to Sulaiti's 37.
Men's Trap Final
By the first elimination, it already looked like the momentum was going to one person - Naser Meqlad.
At the lower end of the table, Mohammed Mansour Al-Shriedh from Saudi Arabia was eliminated first after a close final round with Kuwait's Abdulrahman Al-Faihan of Kuwait, who stayed in the competition as the higher seed, but would then join Al-Shriedh on the sidelines after the next five targets.
With a few misses, Kazakhstan's Mark Pochivalov fell into fourth, but then scored four to Mohammed Al-Rumaihi from Qatar's three to progress - again by virtue of being the higher seed. By this point, Meqlad had ensured he would contest the final 10 shots, being a colossal eight targets ahead of Kazakhstan's Alisher Aisalbayev and nine in front of Pochivalov.
With both Aisalbayev and Pochivalov missing one, the latter would take the bronze medal, while Meqlad only needed to hit two targets from 10 to secure the gold.
He would go better than that, finishing with the maximum score of 50 while Aisalbayev scored a respectable nine from his final 10. Meqlad quietly got on with the job at hand and was showered in water by his team after shooting a perfect final.