Dhaka, Aug 5 (bdnews24.com) - Bangladeshi athletes leave here Wednesday for China to take part in the Being Olympics with a bar on shooter Sharmin Akhter's participation in the meet.
The decision on Sharmin came Tuesday after the meeting of delegations' registration in presence of the chef-de-missions in Beijing, said a Bangladesh Olympic Association press release.
The statement read Sharmin would not be eligible to compete Beijing Games after a re-evaluation of minimum qualification score (MQS) by International Shooting Federation.
It also said that the entrance of an Iranian shooter forced Sharmin to leave her place.
Now, swimmer Rubel Rana will carry the national flag instead of Sharmin, who was supposed to compete in the 10m air rifles event. Sharmin, however, would visit China as an observer.
Clinching a medal in Olympic is still beyond imagination for Bangladesh that only participates in the Olympics on the basis of wild card given by International Olympic Council (IOC).
Bangladeshi athletes also don't dare to dream of Olympic medals, and they are keenly interested in improving their individual performances in Beijing Games ahead of 2009 South Asian (SA) Games in Bangladesh.
Except the regional games, Bangladesh's highest success was in the Commonwealth meets with shooter Sabrina Sultana and Asif Hossain bagging gold medals in 1990 and 2002 respectively.
But, this time, shooter M Imam Hossain was given the chance ahead of Asif, whose performance was gradually going down.
"I am only thinking of my performance. I will desperately want to maintain the performance I have shown in my favourite 10m air rifles event during the practice," Imam told bdnews24.com Tuesday.
In practice, Imam scored 589 out of 600, surpassing his previous best of 585 he set in 2006 Asian Games in Qatar to finish 24th among 600 competitors. Imam also bagged gold medal in the last national shooting championship scoring 585.
Armyman M Abu Abdullah will run in the 100m sprint in a bid to improve his individual performance though his preparation was not good enough to beat his own record.
"My contest is with myself though the preparation is not good enough," said Abdullah, who became 100m sprint first in 2008 national athletic championship with a hand time of 10.30 seconds.
"It will certainly go up in the electronic board and I would be pleased if I clock 10.50 or 10.60 seconds as my previous best (electronic board) was 10.89 in the SA Games in Pakistan," said Abdullah.
Nazmunnahar Beauty, who recently switched to 100m and 200m sprint from 400m run, also seeks a better performance in 100m sprint.
"I will be happy if I can finish the line in 11.70 seconds (electronic) in Beijing as for the first time I will run in 100m sprint in an international meet," said Beauty, whose best (hand time) was 11:60.
Rubel will swim in 50m freestyle eyeing an improvement to his previous best of 25 seconds.
"To be honest, I will seek gathering knowledge from Beijing Games, and later try to apply it in the SA Games in Bangladesh."
Though it is not her favourite event, Dolly Akhter will swim in the 50m freestyle.
Dolly said that her favourite event was 100m breaststroke and she was going to participate in 50m freestyle in line with her enrollment in the meet.
Dolly said that she finished 50m freestyle in the Athens Olympics clocking 31 seconds and competed 100m breaststroke in Sydney Olympics.
bdnews24.com/ar/rm/2100 hrs
