DOHA (Qatar): Rashid Saleh Hamad felt that the ISSF World Cups are tougher than Olympics after picking up his maiden medal (bronze) at the ISSF Egypt World Cup for shotgun in Cairo on Thursday night.
The Qatari has now trained his guns on next month’s Word Cup in India’s capital city New Delhi where the shooters will vie for Olympic quota places.
“World Cup competitions are very tough and challenging events even tougher than the Olympic Games,” Rashid told KHEL UPDATES from Cairo.
The 34-year-old, , who represented Qatar at the 2008 Beijing and 2016 Rio Games, is hoping to make it to the Tokyo Olympics, and will be looking for yet another podium finish in India in the March 18 to 29 event.
“At Olympics it is just the 36 qualified shooters who are taking part but at the World Cup you have a lot of shooters who will taking part in the qualifying rounds, so I rate the World Cup are more competitive than the Olympics,” added Rashid.
Rashid will fly to New Delhi on March 11 to take part in another World Cup another event where in shooters can pick up their Olympic quota places.
If he does, he will make a strong case to pick the Olympic quota for this year’s Games in Tokyo in July.
“I have a very good chance, but I have to wait till the next World Cup in India for my Olympic quota chances. I am going to India directly from here,” Rashid said.
On Thursday, Rashid finished with a score of 41 in the final round, behind first-placed Ukraine’s Mikola Milchev rolled backed the years to shoot 53 and win gold, Denmark’s Jesper Hansen shot 52 to take second place.
2012 London Olympic Games bronze medallist Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah is also aiming to make it to his record seventh Games, but the ace Qatari missed the final round by a whisker.
He finished seventh at the end of the qualification rounds — only six top shooters qualify for the final after five rounds of 25 targets each.
