Former Olympic champion Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Hasher Al Maktoum announced the launch of the Nad Al Sheba World Sporting Clays Championship and revealed his plans for spreading the sport of shooting amongst the youth of the UAE.

Sheikh Ahmed, who became the UAE’s only Olympic medallist when he won gold in double trap shooting in Athens 2004, has recently created the Nad Al Sheba Shooting Team (NAS) which will be signing an agreement with the country’s National Olympic Committee to be part of their Schools Olympics programme, so he can introduce shooting to young kids.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Ahmed, as head of the organising committee, with the help of the Dubai Sports Council, will be working on hosting the Nad Al Sheba World Sporting Clays Championship, which will take place from February 28 to March 5, 2013.The competition is expected to attract over 1,000 of the world’s top Sporting shooters and will offer a total prize money of $600,000. Sporting clays is the most popular form of shooting across the globe, although it is not an Olympic discipline.While the other disciplines only use standard targets, in Sporting almost anything goes. Targets are thrown in a great variety of trajectories, angles, speeds, elevations and distances and the discipline was originally devised to simulate live quarry shooting.

He Said : “I’m an Olympic discipline shooter, this is not an Olympic discipline, this is Sporting. A lot of the shooters in the Olympics started with this kind of discipline which improves all kinds of talent and skills and then they go and specialise into one of the Olympic events,”

“Sheikh Ahmed Says; In my career, I’ve seen the struggles in the circuit in all types of shooting. I want to improve that. So my target is to bring the level of organisation and prizes to a higher level than just the normal one.”

Sheikh Ahmed says there are less than 25 Sporting shooters in the country but he plans on changing that, because he believes introducing young kids to this discipline, can help them go on to become Olympic shooters.

“There aren’t that many shooting ranges for Sporting in Dubai or the UAE and it’s not being promoted well. Some of the organisations follow their own benefit and that’s how they see it and that’s not the way to do it. When you get a big fund from the government or a Sheikh, you should spread it for the benefit of the country, and where’s the benefit of the country? It’s the public, it’s the young generation. And that’s our goal now,” said the 49-year-old.

“We’re going to sign an agreement with the Olympic Committee that’s taking care of the School Olympics programme and that way we’re going to track a lot of shooters. We have the capacity to invite 100 students every week, that’s 20 students every week day, we’ll have a record of every student, we’ll be in contact with his school and his parents, and at the end of the season, we’ll select the best out of them. The programme is mainly targeting the young generation.”Sheikh Ahmed previously coached Sheikh Juma bin Dalmook Al Maktoum, who represented the UAE at the London Olympics last year, but they have since parted ways.He also trained Olympic champion Peter Wilson, taking the Brit to gold at his home Games.