Rosario in historic trek from 'pulot' boy to Olympian

LONDON – When skeet shooter Brian Rosario was 12, he used to pick up empty shells from the ground after his father Paul finished firing at the range. In time, Rosario picked up a shotgun and started shooting, too, to join his father, a Southeast Asian Games veteran, in practice.

On Monday, Rosario makes his Olympic debut here in the skeet qualifications where there are 36 entries, including 23-year-old US Army sergeant Vincent Hancock who holds the Olympic record of 121 and the world mark of 125, a perfect score. Hancock won the gold in the event at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Shooters are bunched in groups of six in the qualifications composed of five rounds. In the second bracket with Rosario are Anders Golding of Denmark, Stefan Nilsson of Sweden, Ennio Falco of Italy, Frank Thompson of the US and Anthony Terras of France.

The skeet is one of two categories in the shotgun event, the other is trap. Shooters fire at clay targets made of pitch and chalk as they are released in the air. A hit is awarded if a piece visibly falls from any of the targets and explodes in a puff of purple smoke. The shooter with the most hits is declared the winner. Each contestant will shoot 125 targets over five rounds or 25 per round. The top six finishers in the qualifications advance to shoot 25 targets each in the finals. Shoot-offs will be arranged to break ties.

The skeet shooters move around eight stations and fire at two targets in each stop, one thrown from a high position and one from a low position with a random gap of zero to three seconds between their release. The first target is like a bird approaching swiftly overhead while the path of the second approximates the flight of a grouse launching itself from the heather, wrote David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton in the book “How To Watch the Olympics.” The authors recalled that at the 1900 Paris Olympics, live pigeons were used as targets and “nearly 300 birds were killed, leaving blood and feathers all over the participants, officials and spectators.”

Venue for shooting is the Royal Artillery Barracks which was built between 1775 and 1802. According to the media handbook provided by the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, three temporary indoor ranges for pistol and rifle shooting were constructed at the Barracks. Outdoor shotgun ranges for trap and skeet were also made.

Rosario, 30, has come a long way from being a “pulot” boy for his father. Although he booked a ticket to London as an Olympic scholar athlete, Rosario has achieved the minimum qualifying score in six competitions, including three World Cups, in the last two years. At the World Shotgun Championships in Serbia last year, he hit 120 of 125 points to make it to the top 10 in a field of over 100 competitors. It was his best performance as a skeet shooter ever.

“Based on my scores in three World Cups, I think I have a chance to get a medal in London,” said Rosario, a Thames International School marketing graduate who assists his father in the family business involving industrial ceramics. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to go to the Olympics. I was surprised and overwhelmed. Last year was a good shooting year for me and I hope to build on that momentum.”

Rosario is competing with his trusty 15-year-old Perazzi shotgun from Italy. “It’s an old gun but I’m used to it,” he said. “Once, it misfired during a competition. Things like that happen sometimes. I’ve replaced the spring and the firing pin and it’s fine now. I owe my trip to the Olympics to my father who taught me how to shoot before I was a teenager. My inspiration is my wife Suzette and our nine-month-old daughter Colleen.”

Rosario bagged two gold medals at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in the individual and team events. He added a silver in the Bangkok Games two years later. In 2009, Rosario picked up golds in the individual and team events at the Southeast Asian Shooting Association Championships in Bangkok.

Rosario is here with shooting coach Gay Corral. They left Manila last June 28 to train at the E. J. Churchill shooting range in Chilterns less than 50 kilometers from Central London. Philippine National Shooting Association president Mikee Romero described Rosario as “a very determined shooter (who) wants to prove something.” Romero said he is optimistic that Rosario will hit peak form when he starts shooting on Monday.

The closest a Filipino shooter came to an Olympic medal was Martin Gison’s fourth place finish in the small-bore .22 rimfire rifle prone event at the 1936 Berlin Games. Gison is the country’s only five-time Olympian who competed in 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1984. Another shooter Cesar Jayme participated in four Olympics in 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1960.