Jamaica Defence Force Captain Dwayne Ford dethroned Guyana’s Lennox Brathwaite to win the Wogarth Cup as Jamaica won the Team Match by the smallest of margins as the West Indies Full Bore Shooting Council Championship came to an exciting climax at Twickenham Park on Saturday.

Jamaica’s eight-member team were forced to dig deep to hold off a hard-charging Guyana which made the victory satisfying for Jamaica Rifle Association Vice-President Karen Anderson, who was also a member of the winning team.

"Jamaica is positively thrilled to have won the West Indies Cup team match on home soil and defeating Guyana in the process," she said.

"It has been a long slog in trying to beat them over the years and to do it on home soil, in particular, after a really tough tournament. We showed a great level of consistency. There might have been some doubt after the long-range team match the day before where we finished last but it bodes well for the team's confidence how we managed to end the tournament and win that particular cup."

She also reserved special praise for team leader, Captain Ford.

"It is even more heartening when you see Dwayne Ford win the Wogarth Cup which is a tremendous achievement in defeating Lennox Brathwaite, who is a seven-time Wogarth winner. We are on a high and we are just going to build on this going into next year's competition."

Captain Ford, a recently crowned O-Class champion, led his team by example. He and teammate Nicola Guy shot impressively at 300 yards, each scoring perfect scores of 50.4 to give Jamaica an early five-point lead. The home team scored 373.23 over its nearest rivals Antigua and Barbuda with Guyana on 360.16.

Jamaica extended its lead after 500 yards with a score of 379.20 but Guyana eventually narrowed the gap and claimed victory with a score 383.23.

Braithwaite answered the call at 500 yard with score of 50.3 that would prove pivotal at the final range as he and Ford battled for the Wogarth Cup that goes to the top-scoring shooter in the West Indies Cup.

At 600 yards, Jamaica dropped 10 points early on and found themselves in a major shoot-out with Guyana. However, the shooters managed to steel themselves and recovered to score 1114.58 to hold off Guyana who shot a 1113.63. 

In the end, Ford defeated the seven-time champion Brathwaite by 0.1 to take the Wogarth Cup.

Multiple-time winner Lennox Braithwaite of Guyana won the Grand Aggregate in the individual event at the 2022 West Indies Full Bore Shooting Championships on Thursday. The championship is being held at Twickenham Park in St. Catherine, Jamaica.

Brathwaite, who lamented the pandemic-induced relative lack of preparation coming into the tournament, won with a score of 467.39 out of a possible 480 points. He defeated Emmanuel Gauvin and Avtar Nanrey of Canada as well as compatriots Sherwin Felicien and Ransford Goodluck, who finished in the top five.

Guyana had five shooters in the top 10.

Jamaica’s national champion Dwayne Forde scored 449.30 to finished seventh while Karen Anderson was 17th.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Jordan-Cousins of Barbados scored 436.20 while out-dueling Anderson (435.25) to win the Amazon trophy which goes to the top female shooter. Women shoot against the males on the same targets and use same equipment in the competition.

The competition continued on Friday, October 28, with the team event which comprises a short-range and long range component.

The long-range team match, for the Milex Cup, began on Friday and will be followed by the short-range (300m/500m/600m) team match for the Wogarth Cup.

Braithwaite is the defending champion. The short range team match is Saturday, October 29.

Forty shooters from across the Caribbean are in Jamaica for the 2022 West Indies Full Bore Shooting Council Championships set to run from October 24 - 29 at the Twickenham Park range in St Catherine following a two-year hiatus because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The best shooters from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Canada, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago will be vying to claim the title held by Trinidad and Tobago when the tournament was last held in 2019. However, there will likely be a new champion as the twin-island republic has sent only one shooter to the tournament this year. Barbados, too, has sent a single shooter.

The six-country championship will feature shooters aiming at targets from a minimum of 300 to a maximum of a 1000 yards.

Guyanese Lennox Braithwaite, Wogarth Cup champion, is back to defend his title having had the highest score in the short-range team match last time out. However, he admitted to Sportsmax.TV that his confidence is not where it should be going into competition.

“As a sportsman we try our best to prepare ourselves but there were two years of not shooting and so the kind of preparation that we would have liked we have not been able to on the outdoors but on the indoors, we would have done some of the exercises that would keep the muscle memory,” he said, but in terms of reading the weather conditions and so on for two years we would have been off.

“I am not so confident because I would guess that all the other teams maybe going through similar or had a better position in preparing. In Guyana, we hadn’t had the use of the ranges until about a month ago, so we had some challenges there.”

Notwithstanding the challenges, Brathwaite said he plans to offer a stern defense of his title.

“I would want to defend that position but at the same time I have to realistic because there are people who want to win also.”

He pointed out the shooters from Antigua and the host country as those he has to be wary of. “Nobody wants to lose at home,” he said laughingly.

Indeed, Jamaica would not want to lose at home and as such have fielded a strong team led by Phillip Scott and that includes national champion Dwayne Forde, who has been deemed a ‘definite contender’ for the individual title.

The team also comprises Karen Anderson, Denis John Nelson, David Rickman, Denis Lee, Claude Russell, Nicola Guy, Jose Nunez and Canute CC Coley.