Demarest Lands Shot in Sydney

Daryl Szarenski and Bill Demarest secured spots on the U.S. Olympic shooting team Saturday in the free pistol competition at Atlanta.

Szarenski won the USA Shooting National Championships and Demarest, of Mission Viejo, finished fourth to take the top two spots in combined scoring with the spring trial at Fort Benning, Ga.

Todd Graves and Michael Schmidt will make up the men’s skeet team. Graves finished second in this event, and Schmidt was fourth. Scott Schroeder won the national title.

In women’s skeet, Cindy Shenberger easily took the lone spot available in the discipline.

Christina Cassidy was provisionally selected to the U.S. team in women’s air pistol after finishing sixth in this event. Cassidy must compile a minimum qualifying score in the World Cup in Atlanta on July 15 to compete in Sydney.

Rebecca Snyder won the air pistol national championship.

Earlier in the competition, Josh Lakatos of Pasadena, a silver medalist in the 1996 Atlanta Games, made the team in men’s trap and Kim Rhode of El Monte, an Olympic gold medalist as a 16-year-old in Atlanta, qualified for Sydney in double trap.

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Aboriginal activists are predicting daily protests involving 20,000 people at Olympic Park during the Sydney Games, Sydney’s Sun-Herald reported.

A group called Protest 2000 wants to coordinate demonstrations to highlight injustices faced by Australia’s indigenous population, and seeks coverage from the foreign media, the newspaper said.

Protest 2000 was reportedly planning to erect a tent city at Olympic Park, the main Olympic precinct at Homebush Bay, despite official rejection of the proposal from Games organizers.

Protest spokesman Trevor Close said the demonstrations Sept. 15-Oct. 1 would be peaceful.

“We don’t want to hinder tourists and fans, but we will spend an hour a day outside the stadium--we have a constitutional right to demonstrate,” he said.

Aborigines comprise about 386,000 of Australia’s nearly 19 million population. Government surveys show they have the poorest levels of health and education, and the highest rates of alcoholism, infant mortality and imprisonment.

During the long-running process of reconciliation between black and white Australians, Prime Minister John Howard has been criticized for refusing to apologize to Aborigines for the practices of past governments.