Extreme weather won’t dampen Kenyan’s hopes in Handgun championships

Participant Syan Sunny confirms his results with Range Officer after successful stage shoot [Photos by Caroline Obuya]

Despite the heavy pounding rains witnessed early Friday morning with cold windy weather; the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) African Handgun championships kicked off on a high with Team Kenya looking fit and ready for the tourney.

Kenya's Ibrahim Ndung'u in action at the Africa Level 4 Handgun Championships at the Frontier Shooting Range in South Africa. [Photos by Caroline Obuya]

The championship featuring 23 squads is taking place at the expansive Frontier Shooting range in Stilfontein South Africa and has brought together about 400 shooters from all over the world with a majority number of shooters coming from South Africa.

Other countries participating in the continental event that takes place every three years include Namibia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Germany, Norway and USA.

The three-day tournament features various categories which include open division, standard division classic division, production division and revolver division.

Kenya’s Ibrahim Ndung'u, James Kariuki and Mwangi Gikonyo will be battling it out in the production division; Sammy Onyango will take it head-on in the Standard division while Syan Sunny will face it off in the open division.

“In Kenya we only shoot level 1. This is a big match; it is the Africa Level IV handgun championship whereby we will be shooting a total of 24 Stages. We intend to perform well,” said Sammy Onyango.

Ibrahim Ndungu who started off with an impressive show that captured the attention of shooters in his squad is confident that this will be a good shoot.

Kenya's Ibrahim Ndung'u in action at the Africa Level 4 Handgun Championships at the Frontier Shooting Range in South Africa.[Photos by Caroline Obuya]

“It was raining heavily in the morning which caused a bit of delay because most targets were wet so they had to change all of them before the shoot began. The weather now is perfect for the shoot.

“Some stages were also submerged but those were fixed in the nick of time and we managed to start off well,” explained Ibrahim Ndung’u. 

The kick-off though had a fair share of challenges especially from the strong winds which led to falling down the steel popper targets on several occasions while shooters were in action.

This and other hitches led to range failure in a few stages and the shooters had to do a re-shoot.