Female shooter with 2 children wins ticket to Olympics
Leaving the shooting range for 6 years to get married and have two children, but the love for guns helped Hoang Ngoc return to win a silver medal at the SEA Games and a ticket to the 2012 Olympics.
Among the athletes who won tickets to the Olympics, Hoang Ngoc’s achievements were the most hidden. Before that, no one thought that an athlete who had just returned to the national team after a long time could make such a miracle. Ngoc won the ticket on the 28th day of the Lunar New Year, when every family was preparing for Tet.
This tall and slender female shooter with an impressive fighting style is a child of a shooting family. Her mother, former shooter Hoang Thi May, was the one who introduced her daughter to the shooting range. When she was a child, she followed her mother to practice and compete. The shooting range was quiet, with only the sharp sounds of gunfire, which made Hoang Ngoc feel scared. But when she grew up and tried shooting at her mother's suggestion, she found that she had some talent and gradually fell in love with the sport. When she won her first championship in a youth tournament, Hoang Ngoc truly fell in love with shooting.
Born in 1982, Hoang Ngoc became involved in shooting quite late. At the age of 18, she started practicing at the Army Shooting Center's gifted class. During her 12 years of shooting, she had to take half of the time off because she got married and had two children. However, Hoang Ngoc has the qualities and talent that are very suitable for shooting, so the door to success is still open for her.
To prepare for the 2012 Olympics, Hoang Ngoc and her teammates were given a new Morini CM 162 EL air rifle made in Switzerland. The first thing Hoang Ngoc did with the new weapon was to redesign the stock to fit her hand size. She planed, chiseled, and shaped the stock so that her hand could comfortably hold the gun and shoot easily. Professional shooters like Hoang Ngoc also have to take care of a lot of their own tools and supplies. That's why she calls her job "playing with guns".
Although she had only officially returned to the team in 2011, Hoang Ngoc was not unfamiliar with the profession. She still maintained her sharp eyes, good health, balance and self-regulation. Before attending the Asian Championship in Qatar in January 2012, the Korean expert - who guided the whole team to train there - commented that Hoang Ngoc had the best chance of winning an Olympic ticket, because her training results could put her in a high position in the 8-person final round. Moreover, in Ngoc's category, there were 4 good female shooters who had already won Olympic tickets.
However, Ngoc's road to the Olympics was not easy. In the women's 10m air rifle event, due to her high performance in training, Hoang Ngoc was a bit subjective when entering the competition and had to pay the price when her trigger movement was a bit hasty, leading to many bullets either flying out or achieving low scores.
When it came to the sport pistol event, encouraged by his teacher, Hoang Ngoc regained his composure and competed more methodically and moderately. In this shooting event, the biggest challenge was the second shot, consisting of 6 rounds, each round of 5 bullets. The rules stipulated that the shooter had to shoot each bullet in 3 seconds, with 7 seconds to lower the gun and prepare for the next round. Hoang Ngoc said that one of the biggest challenges for shooters was quick reflexes. If the aim was not set properly, or the trigger was pulled too quickly, the bullet would miss the target, or if the shot was too precise, the bullet would fly to the target too late. The athlete would lose points in both cases.
The necessary composure helped her reach the final of the sport pistol and finish 6th overall with a score of 579 points. Since the 4 athletes above her had already qualified for the Olympics, Hoang Ngoc and the 5th and 7th athletes were awarded the last tickets from Asia to the Olympics.
Although she only qualified for one Olympic event, according to regulations, at the 2012 Olympics, Le Thi Hoang Ngoc will participate in both events: 10m air pistol and 25m women's sports pistol.
Together with Hoang Xuan Vinh, Le Thi Hoang Ngoc has made a historic achievement for Vietnamese shooting.
Currently, Le Thi Hoang Ngoc and her teammates practice every day at the shooting range of the National Sports Training Center in Hanoi. The female athlete born in 1982 is focusing on getting used to the new gun, while also practicing more shooting skills and posture.
Competing in the 2012 Olympics is a special honor, a "dream come true" in the life of a shooter Le Thi Hoang Ngoc. She said she will practice really hard to show her best performance at the shooting range in London next July.
According to Express
