Shooting: A breath of fresh air

If Wang Yang manages to shoot his way into the medals at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, he will thank - not necessarily in this order - the Minister of Sport, the Minister of Immigration, his yen to speak better English and people who like sushi.

To explain - Wang is a world-class air pistol shooter whose residency has just been completed three years after he first came to New Zealand to brush up his English.

A former Chinese junior record-holder who also equalled the world junior record, Wang liked New Zealand and elected to stay. But immigration being the lengthy process it is, he had to get a work visa before he could apply for residency and, in the end, our Commonwealth Games people sought help from the Government to get Wang the residency he needed to be able to compete for New Zealand. He was added to the team last week.

A shooter since he was 11 and a professional shooter and coach in his hometown of Tangshang (about an hour and a half out of Beijing), Wang is a sushi maker in an Auckland supermarket and has Wednesdays and Sundays off - "cause they are club [shooting] days."

Now 29, Wang was born just after the Tangshang earthquake of 1976 which killed an almost unbelievable 242,000 people. He became a shooter because a next-door neighbour was a women's rifle coach and she put him in touch with a pistol coach.

"I like guns," Wang said, with refreshing honesty. "I just liked the whole idea of shooting them. I found it very exciting. I was one of 13 children who started shooting but all the others left.

"They found it too boring. The coach wouldn't let us fire many pellets, instead asking us to hold our arms out so we would have the ability to hold the gun steady. I found it boring but stayed on."

His persistence was rewarded with many titles but he found it hard to break into the competitive Chinese team.

"The best I did was in 2000 when I finished third in the national championships," he said. "But at that stage, the Chinese authorities felt that older, more experienced shooters would do better in international competition."

Still, Wang wasn't expecting to emigrate to New Zealand when he arrived here three years ago but is now looking forward to Melbourne after not being able to compete internationally - in spite of shooting scores shich would have won medals at previous Commonwealth Games. His partnership with 10-time medal winner Greg Yelavich in the pistol pairs could be a lucrative one.

Shooting has been charged with winning 12 medals at these games and Wang's inclusion will obviously help with that goal. Wang himself said he feels a gold medal might be "hoping too much".

"The Indian shooters are very, very good and they shoot full-time now," he said. "But I hope I can challenge for second and third."

-HERALD ON SUNDAY