Commonwealth Games Shooting: Aqilah Sudhir and Jasmine Ser spot on for Singapore’s second gold medal

By Erwin Wong/Red Sports

India, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 — Team Singapore won their second gold medal of the 19th Commonwealth Games in the space of four hours when shooters Aqilah Bte Sudhir and Jasmine Ser finished first in the women’s 50 metres Rifle 3 Positions pairs final.

The first Team Singapore gold medal also came from shooting, when Nigel Lim and Gai Bin won the men’s 50m Pistol Pairs event.

Aqilah and Jasmine scored a total of 1149 points, breaking the Games record of 1143, which was the score of silver medalists India. The pair from Scotland took bronze with a score of 1142.

Aqilah was in superb form, scoring 199 from a possible 200 in the prone position, the highest individual score of the field. The 19 year old followed that up with scores of 190 and 192 in the standing and kneeling positions, tied for first and second best respectively.

Aqilah, whose total score of 581 was a new personal best, said: “I am just letting this feeling sink in. It’s a great feeling and I am happy to have won a gold for Singapore together with Jasmine Ser. We never really thought of breaking the Commonwealth Games record or anything like that. We came into this competition wanting to do well and wanting to do well for Singapore. The competition is tough and all competitors hope to win medals. We are just glad to be able to see our national flag being raised for the second time today.”

“I tried my best to remain calm throughout the competition today. I just remembered what my grandmother always taught me – to recite certain prayer words – just to ensure that I am always calm and will not get affected by nerves,” added Aqilah.

Jasmine, who was Aqilah’s teammate (along with Lim Chea Rong) in the 50m Rifle 3 Positions team that won silver at last year’s South East Asian Games, scored 568 points to ably contribute to the win.

She said, “It is a meaningful win for us. I didn’t do as well today but it was great that my team mate Aqilah was doing well to pull us through all the way to the gold medal.”

“It is great to have a partner who was on top of it all today and that is the joy of taking part in a event for pairs. The good overseas exposure we have been getting like the recent World Cup in Munich certainly helped us a lot because we got used to the high standards of competition and we learnt to handle the pressure of top level competition,” added Jasmine.

With this win here at the Commonwealth Games, Aqilah has added to her 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games gold medal that she won in the 10m Air Rifle.

Both Aqilah and Jasmine will be in action again on Thursday, October 7th, in the individual 50m Rifle 3 Positions.