UAE at Rio 2016: Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum, Saif bin Futtais miss shooting cut

Saif Bin Futtais. Courtesy Aletihad

Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum and Saif bin Futtais, the two UAE hopes in the men’s skeet competition, have missed the qualifying cut.

With only the top six shooters from 32-man qualifying field making it to the semi-final round, both Sheikh Saeed and Bin Futtais gave it their best effort, but fell short.

Sheikh Saeed finished with a score of 118, three short of the 121 targets hit by Gabriele Rossetti and Jesper Hansen, who qualified for the semis as the No 5 and No 6 following a shoot-off, while Bin Futtais, Asia’s No1 ranked skeet shooter, had an aggregate of 114 for the five rounds of qualifying across two days.

Starting the day from the 14th position, after hitting 70 of the possible 75 targets in Friday’s first three rounds of qualifying, Sheikh Saeed warmed up with a 23 in the opening round before finishing his qualifying campaign with a perfect round of 25.

Bin Futtais, who resumed from the 24th position after hitting 68 targets on the first day of qualifying, shot two solid rounds of 23 each yesterday, but still finished at No 29.

Kuwaiti Abdullah Al Rashidi, competing under the IOA flag since his country is banned, and Sweden’s Marcus Svensson topped the qualifying results by hitting 123 of the 125 targets, an Olympic record, while Stefan Nilsson, also of Sweden, and Ukraine’s Mikola Milchev took the following two spots with scores of 122 each.

There was a five-way tie on 121, but Rossetti and Hansen clinched the two remaining semi-final berths following a shoot-off, finishing ahead of Eric Delaunay, Anthony Terras and Mairaj Ahmad Khan.

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