By Abdellatif Sharaa

KUWAIT: Tournament of HH the Amir continues its competitions today at Sheikh Sabah Olympic Shooting Complex, as official training for 10m pistol and rifle will start at 9 am, while the trap competition for men and women, shooting at 75 targets will start at 9 am. The 70 meter archery competition will kick of at 8 am and the finals will follow 45 minutes later.

Shooters Talal Al-Rashidi and Abdelrahman Al-Faihan, who already qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, will get into competitions with shooters from Italy, Kazakhstan, UAE, Qatar, and Lebanon, while Khalid Al-Mudhaf, Nasser Al-Miqlid and Fahad Lafi will be in competition also. Kuwait's women shooters Sarah and Shahad Al-Hawal will also compete with Italian, Kazakhstan and Lebanon champions.

Meanwhile, Abdallah Al-Harby will find the rifle competition, Hamad Al-Namshan and Abdallah Al-Mulla the pistol competition a difficult one in the presence of world champions from Serbia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Iran and Bahrain.

Meanwhile, Secretary General of Arab and Kuwait Shooting Federations, Obaid Munahi Al-Osaimi, President of African and Egyptian Shooting Federaiton Major General Hazem Hosny, and lecturer Pekka distributed certificates to referees who successfully passed the running targets course, which was organized by Kuwait Shooting Federation (KSF) under the patronage of International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF).

Al-Osaimi said KSF always support referees be them the new ones or veterans through organizing courses in order to allow them run major international competitions. The new referees who passed the course are Khalid Al-Jurayyed, Abdallah Al-Shimmari, Salem Al-Dahish, Amina Ismail, Awatef Hamdan, Shaima Dashdi, Ali Hassan, Mutlaq Al-Thafiri, Muhanna Al-Ghurba, Showq Al-Hajji, Wafaa Abdelrahim, Hind Al-Harby, Ali Hussein, Asayel Al-Shimmari, Ali Ghalib and Faisal Al-Shimmari.

On the other hand, the technical meeting of the tournament was held yesterday morning in presence of delegations representatives. Tournament Director Obaid Al-Osaimi thanked HH the Amir for patronizing the tournament in which shooters representing 30 countries are participating. He said all obstacles were removed away from the shooters to allow them compete at their best.

Al-Osaimi conveyed condolences to the Sultanate of Oman's government and people on the sad demise of Sultan Qaboos bin Said who died yesterday. He said the tournament's higher organizing committee postponed the opening ceremony due to the official mourning of the sultan's death in the State of Kuwait.

Head of the shotgun referees committee Hamad Aqel Al-Ruwaisan said his committee prepared for the tournament by holding special training camp, and a refresher course for international and local referees (16 international and 9 local).

He said all referees in the tournament are highly experienced Kuwaitis who participated in several tournaments including the World Cup, Asian games and Arab championships.