The West Indies played impressively to finish third as Great Britain predictably retained The Australia Match full bore rifle event which was contested yesterday at Paragon.
The regional shooters had been challenged by captain Paul Slowe, a former assistant commissioner of police in Guyana, to command the respect of the higher ranked international competitors from Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the Channel Islands.
Great Britain had signalled their daunting form over the previous four days when they along with the other non-regional teams took part in the West Indies championship, albeit without being entitled to claim prizes.
True to form, Chris Watson of Great Britain was the outstanding shooter while David Luckman exploited his surname by registering the highest aggregate for the winners.
With action taking place in the distances of 300, 600, 900 and 1000 yards, Great Britain accumulated 1952.167 points, Australia 1909.130, West Indies 1791.099, Canada 1741.091, Channel Magpies 1738.066 and West Indies ‘B’ 1724.071.
Rifle director William Murrell said that he expected the local and regional shooters to benefit from the tournament in order to move even higher in the next event.
“Shooting is not as popular as football and some of the other mass based sports so we struggle to get sponsorship,” Murrell said.
“The Barbados Olympic Association was generous in helping us to host this competition and we hope that this event would have painted shooting in a positive light in order for us to attract sponsorship as well as more members to achieve our local, regional and international objectives as a sport.”
All of the visiting teams praised the organization of the competition and paid tribute to Murrell who played a significant role in the success of the shoot which is one of the few sports in the world where men and women compete against each other.
