MANILA, Philippines—Bemedalded skeet shooter Paul Brian Rosario fell just a point shy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics gold-medal score of 121 in an impressive outing at the recent ISSF World Cup Shotgun Championships in Belgrade.
The 29-year-old Rosario’s score of 120 in the men’s skeet event of the tough annual championships missed American sharpshooter Vincent Hancock’s output in Beijing and his own Philippine record by two points.
It was the highest total string posted by a Filipino in a world-caliber competition.
Rosario shot a national-record 121 in a local competition in Muntinlupa in January and improved it to 122—three points shy of a perfect score of 125—in still another local tournament a month later.
His sterling performance in Serbia came after he shot a respectable 118 in the 2011 Sydney World Cup series last April. Both surpassed the 2012 London Olympics’ minimum qualifying score of 114.
Rosario would have been a cinch for at least a gold in the coming Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia had organizers did not scrap the event due to the lack of facilities for the skeet and trap competitions.
He bagged a gold in the individual men’s skeet and shared the gold with Patricio Bernardo and Darius Hizon in the team competition of the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in Manila. A team made up of Rosari, Bernardo and Gabriel Tong settled for the silver medal in the 2007 SEA Games in Bangkok.
Among the region’s finest shotgun shooters, Rosario won the individual gold in both the 2005 and 2009 SEASA championships in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, respectively, and combined with Tong and Bernardo for the team gold in the Malaysia competition.
Rosario, who enjoys the sponsorship of the Britain-based London Olympic Scholarship Program, belongs to the pool of athletes of the Philippines National Shooting Association whose skills are being sharpened for the 2012 Summer Games.