Ermira Dingu, the European Champion with the last cartridge that forced the organizers to fly the Albanian flag in Madrid!

Ermira Dingu
The Shooting Champion of the Sports Club “Partizani and
European Champion in Madrid, Spain in the Rifle Prone competition, an event we will talk about below. From the mistake of the judge in counting the shoots to the non-presentation of the Albanian flag at the medal ceremony where there was a risk of a diplomatic incident.

Dingu was born in Tirana in 1951. The eldest of four children in the family. During high school, she was active with the school gymnastics team. Ironically, the shooting sport was completely unknown to the future champion, even though she actually came from a family of athletes, raised with the sporting spirit of her uncle Iliaz Dingu, the well-known football player of the KS Partizani football team.

She had her first contact with shooting in high school, in the eighth grade, all of a sudden when coach Ali Mata was looking for elements for the creation of the Tirana youth team. This is how the outstanding trainer noticed the girl’s talent from the first test at the training ground. Out of the three bullets that the test consisted of, Ermira hits the 9 twice and the 10 one. With the enthusiasm of a child, she held up the picture of the board where she had hit and went home to show it to her father. An immediate opposition from her father, did not stop Ermira from continuing this sport, on the contrary, she was selected to be part of the team.

In 1969, Ermira Dingu joined the national representative team for young people who had gathered to hold the first competition abroad, in the Balkan Championship in Romania.
This would be the start of her path in the shooting sport, which belongs to the time period 1969-1984. During this period, she was a participant in 26 international activities, including Balkan Championships, European and World Championships.

In addition to being active in sports, Dingu earned her studies in Mechanical Engineering.

Dingu’s first important competition in the international arena will be the one in 1974 in the World Championship. In the 50m rifle prone competition, she collected 593 points, placing the new Albanian champion in 6th place, among the six best shooters in the world.

Let’s go back to our event, in the distant September of 1984
The 12th European Championship in Madrid September 24-27, 1984

The peak of the career of the Albanian shooter Ermira Dingu is the title of European champion in the exciting competition of the discipline 50m rifle property 1×60 precision. Dingu collected 594 points, achieving this success in the last bullet in the 60th, in a race that lasted over 2 hours.

The final standings of the race was this:
1-Ermira Dingu (ALB) 594 points
2-Marliese Helbig (DDR)
3-Huberta Mueller (AUT).

This race was also accompanied by two small incidents.

But what happened to the counting of cartridges by the judge?
Why did the organizers make a mistake in presenting the Albanian flag at the medal ceremony?

Ermira, is lying in position for the whole of this long race, prepares to close it with the last shoot available, the 60th one, as the rules of the 50m rifle discipline 1×60 precision contain.

She waits for the target to be raised for the last time. The judge of the race claims by telling her that she already has finished all the cartridges available, even the 60th.

According to him, the race is over!

Well, the Albanian shooter insists that she has one cartridge, the last attempt according to the protocol of the race. She knows very well that she still has one cartridge left, because usually in every race, she takes the cartridges out of the box herself.

No! She has not forgotten, on the contrary, her concentration in the race is maximum!

Ermira, also characterized by an Albanian stubbornness, does not move from the place of the position, resolutely asking for a review of the shots she made….
She signals that she has no intention of leaving the position.

Finally comes the chief judge of the race, who, after making the calculation according to the request of the Albanian and her coach, confirms that one cartridge is missing!

How is such a mistake possible in a major continental event from a country like Spain?

Ermira now seems to be freed, like a half-numb, from 60 minutes of the race without moving, now she had to continue standing like that for another 18 minutes.

These are minutes of a final full of emotions, drama for our shooter.
She concentrates!
She holds the breath!
She pulls the trigger!

And the last shot is heard and precisely, the last cartridge has hit the 10th mark, which will seal the name of Ermira Dingu as the winner of this hard-fought race, winner of the gold medal and champion of Europe.
It is a great victory for our shooter, for our sport and of course prestige for our country in the center of this old Europe.

The intense training that Dingu had done paid off. She developed the race with a calmness that even she herself did not understand where it came from until ……..the last shot, the missing cartridge!

Did they try to provoke her, test the patience and calmness of this stubborn and unknown athlete, to stop her from winning against world-class shooters?

Be that as it may, she is already the new champion of Europe, she always remained careful, not only with eyes but also with a sharp mind! Ermira knew that there was one cartridge left to shoot out, so that`s why she persisted. Without moving from the position, after two hours of racing, she waited for another 18 minutes, with a five-kilogram weapon on her arm!

The new Albanian championship is characterized by great emotion, while Dingu herself will witness a somewhat bitter experience and another unforeseen incident. It is the moment of the medal ceremony where the first three places are honored….

The local organizers are strangely caught completely off guard. The Spaniards, strangely enough, had not been able to do so and did not even possess a symbolic emblem, an Albanian flag, to perform the rite. They had used as a flag a red background and a kind of black scorpion in the center!!!

Categorically, the Albanian athlete refuses to appear on the podium, and even persistently demands that the issue be resolved immediately, because this could lead to an unprecedented serious diplomatic incident.

Among other things, if Dingu were to get on the podium under that meaningless and unknown flag, returning to Albania would have inevitable consequences for the champion herself.

Between attempts and vicissitudes, which could really lead to a diplomatic incident, the reserve flag taken from Tirana would save the athletes and the protagonist of the first prize, from unforeseen consequences.

Important is the fact that her victory was decently represented until the end of that competition that will be remembered for a long time not only for the gold medal, but also for the two incidents.

Among the many excuses regarding the incident, it was said that the organizing country of this important European event, knew very little about Albania, even some foreign coaches or athletes there asked the Albanian delegation where Albania was located on the map (?)

It was known that communist Albania in that time was a very isolated country from the world, but to the level of not recognizing the national flag from a European country such is Spain in the continental history, this seems a bit exaggerated.
We are not talking here about ordinary people, on the contrary, but about competent, official people who have a level of culture and education.

Not counting the number of cartridges correctly and not recognizing even the flag, are two clues that also prove two conclusions: ignorance, lack of culture or malicious denigration, disregard and consideration towards a small country.

A more or less similar incident will take place in September 2019, before the start of the France – Albania match at the “Stade de France” stadium, when both representatives are lined up waiting for the anthems to be played. Suddenly, the anthem of Andorra is performed for Albanian national team!

Now after 19 years of Albania opening up to the western democratic countries, do we think that in this case it has to do with the isolation of Albania from the iron curtain of communism? Or it was simply ignorance, if not malicious intent, disregard towards the Albanian sports delegations?

Afterwards, Ermira will not be separated from Shooting, but even after retiring in 1984, after winning the title of Republic`s Cup, she will always continue as a coach at her club, Partizani.

Dingu’s career as a shooter and then as a coach mark about 40 years, all with the “Partizani” club. She has coached hundreds of new shooters, while today as a retiree, as always happens in Albania, few people remember the European champion.

____________________________
Sports Vision Plus+ / Champions Hour in activity since 2013