CLAIMING “verbal abuse and maltreatment” by national shotgun team member Carlos “Itos” Carag, Fernando Mercado formally resigned as the longtime national shotgun coach last Monday.
“I can no longer withstand the maltreatment of Mr. Itos Carag against my own person and his teammates. His bad temper and attitude have demoralized the team. He had been cursing me publicly during competitions abroad,” Mercado, who has a Class C license from the International Shooting Sport Federation, said in a letter addressed to Philippine National Shooting Association technical committee chairman Marilu Samaco.
“In many instances, he (Carag) bullies and intimidates his two younger teammates to obviously psyche them out to gain a psychological advantage. In all my years as a shooter and a coach, I’ve never encountered such an unsportsmanlike attitude in shooting,” the coach
He said the other national shotgun team members he was referring to were 2018 Asian Games veteran Hagen Topacio and Beijing Olympian Eric Ang, who finished better than Carag in the ISSF World Cup held in Doha, Qatar last month.
Topacio finished 76th overall with a score of 115 points, meeting the Minimum Qualifying Standard of the PNSA to qualify for the Hangzhou Asian Games in September, while Ang tallied 109 in placing 101st. Carag shot 108 and finished 104th among 118 entries.
“Both Topacio and Ang are willing to testify regarding Carag’s behavior against me,” claimed Mercado, who was also the coach of the trio of Topacio, Ang and Carag that bagged the gold medal in the men’s trap team event of the 2019 Philippine Southeast Asian Games.
Carag was not immediately available for comment.
Mercado lamented that PNSA secretary general Irynne Garcia was apparently indifferent to the shooter’s behavior that has resulted in the coach “having sleepless nights and bouts of depression,” mentioning that the latest incident with Carag was in the last Doha Cup.
“I’ve had enough of his (Carag’s) humiliation and disrespect. Please see my attached report regarding the event of the last World Cup in Doha,” Fernando stressed.
In the same letter, he refuted allegations made against him by PNSA Moving Target Aggrupation committee members composed of Dr. Adel Vergel Samson, Garcia and Jerry Sun.
The trio had earlier written Samaco asking her to look into issues “against shotgun coach Mr. Fernando Mercado,” among them the purchase of clay target from the PSC/PNSA storage at the PSC shooting range in Muntinlupa under the authority of the late MTA committee chairman James Chua.