Tokyo 2020: ISSF Ad-Hoc Committee releases Shooting program

[Mike M.]

The mixed gender team events seem like a farce. but there is precedent for team events. The MLAIC has team events for just about all the international muzzle-loading events.

But it does seem to be a bit contrived.

[ChipEck]

Good letter on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/cm.morini.313/ ... 9439771447

Chip

[JJJJJJ]

The goal of removing 50 free and prone is to be politically and gender correct. 2020 simply can't allow an event where only men can enter and not women. Since you can't add any additional event, the only way is to change the nature of the existing two events.

The easiest way without incurring additional cost and resource is to use air, many free shooters already shoots air and prone shooters can simply adapt. This decision will no doubt anger many but, it will subside and many will also retire after Rio.

While 10m range will be used for six events, the only event that needs a 50m range is 3P. Also rapid, sport and 3P are the only events that use .22 and need an expensive and exclusive range. I'm thinking for 2024 there might be changes that will impact these events, I hope 3P won't become laser.

[jhmartin]

........, the only event that needs a 50m range is 3P. Also rapid, sport and 3P are the only events that use .22 and need an expensive and exclusive range. I'm thinking for 2024 there might be changes that will impact these events, I hope 3P won't become laser.

---Not flaming you JJJJJJ .... but this IS death by only several hundred cuts.

The ISSF had better start thinking seriously about striking out on it's own and veering from the OGs. The IOC is slowly, and not very subtly, closing the door on most shooting.

[JJJJJJ]

The most popular sports don't need the IOC because they are the most popular, unfortunately for the reset we still need the IOC to become attractive, especially for those in other countries where firearms are prohibited.

Until our sports figure out a way to become self efficient and well recognized we have to live under IOC's roof. The bottom line is no one enjoys watching shooting, no expression, no movement ... We need celebrity

[andrewp]

The goal of removing 50 free and prone is to be politically and gender correct. 2020 simply can't allow an event where only men can enter and not women. Since you can't add any additional event, the only way is to change the nature of the existing two events.

2 Olympic events where men do not compete are rhythmic gymnastics and synchronised swimming. I'm not sure if mens events for these will be introduced for 2020 to create true gender equality.

Let's be honest tho, the real reason they are dropping prone is because, to the general viewing public in its current format, it is boring to watch. It seems that aside from removing side blinders, adding clapping and adding music, ISSF have failed to come up with any ideas to make a finals event more interesting.

Speeding up the time between finals shot strings (without the commentators going through the bloody positions every time) would keep things tense, ensuring the commentators are knowledgeable and interesting, adding the shooters profile info to the screen even with HR and scatt trace, are ideas I have come up with in 10mins.

[cedarcreek]

What a short-sighted decision. The history of *Free* Pistol in the Olympics is so long. And since 300m high-power rifle is gone, losing 50m rifle seems like a real loss. Has anyone tried just having Women and Men shoot the same events as a way to address gender inequality? Honestly, I've always assumed the reason the events are so different is because *someone* felt it might be embarrassing for men to have lower scores than women. I've been in many local pistol matches where women shot 60 shots. I don't get it.

[j-team]

What a short-sighted decision. The history of *Free* Pistol in the Olympics is so long. And since 300m high-power rifle is gone, losing 50m rifle seems like a real loss. Has anyone tried just having Women and Men shoot the same events as a way to address gender inequality? Honestly, I've always assumed the reason the events are so different is because *someone* felt it might be embarrassing for men to have lower scores than women. I've been in many local pistol matches where women shot 60 shots. I don't get it.

Sigh... I'm posting the same thing over and over. Look at the results, men beat women in all events except air rifle. So, mixed events do not equal "gender equality".

[David Levene]

What a short-sighted decision. The history of *Free* Pistol in the Olympics is so long. And since 300m high-power rifle is gone, losing 50m rifle seems like a real loss. Has anyone tried just having Women and Men shoot the same events as a way to address gender inequality? Honestly, I've always assumed the reason the events are so different is because *someone* felt it might be embarrassing for men to have lower scores than women. I've been in many local pistol matches where women shot 60 shots. I don't get it.

Sigh... I'm posting the same thing over and over. Look at the results, men beat women in all events except air rifle. So, mixed events do not equal "gender equality".

... and, unless you incorporate some form of discrimination, you cannot guarantee 50% female participation.

[jhmartin]

Has anyone tried just having Women and Men shoot the same events as a way to address gender inequality?

Look at NCAA rifle in the USA.
Training for your event is a part of the equation that you MUST factor in as well. You cannot just cut and paste results from various international competitions.

NCAA has taken the International Mens Air Rifle (60 shots) and Womens 3x20 events as their match. (Note that the 3P match is an indoor 50 ft reduced distance event --- match time and range availability are the limiting factors in the 3P event)
Women put up scores good enough to beat the men.
Data --- go here and sort by Air Descending and Smallbore Descending:
http://ncaarifle.org/Home/IndividualResults

I'm pretty confident that if, in the 3P, the women trained for a 3x40 outdoors they could perform just as well.
I'm also confident that the women could shoot any SG event to the same high quality as the men.
(And I'll pass on a pistol view as I don't really pay as much attention there)

---and---

... and, unless you incorporate some form of discrimination, you cannot guarantee 50% female participation

unless you incorporate some form of discrimination, you cannot guarantee 50% male participation either ....

Probably best if those "discriminatory efforts" were put into the quota slot awarding.

[David Levene]

... and, unless you incorporate some form of discrimination, you cannot guarantee 50% female participation

unless you incorporate some form of discrimination, you cannot guarantee 50% male participation either ....

Probably best if those "discriminatory efforts" were put into the quota slot awarding.[/quote]
Any form of discrimination on sex grounds is against Article 1 of the IOC Code Of Ethics.

If, for example, 2 QPs were available at a World Cup and the shooters in the first 2 places were women and the 3rd place was a man, awarding the man a quota place instead of the woman in 2nd purely on sex grounds would be discrimination.

[SlartyBartFast]

Bart, AFIK the last OG to host 300 meter shooting was München 1972.

Exactly. It disappeared for Montreal in '76.

I´m saddened by the news, having a 30 year career as FP shooter behind me, the most traditional OG match dropped from the programme, but the writing ws clearly on the wall years ago that wathever the COI dictated (as pressed by the sponsors) the ISSF would do.

Did you compete in the Olympics? Could you have had just as good a personal career without the SOG events?

After the IOC's program is announced it appears to mean that Free Pistol is also dropped from World Cup's.
This will put it in the same catagory as Standard and Centrefire, shot only at World Champs every 4 years.
No wonder ISSF shooting is dying......

ISSF can't make the competitions go away. They can only stop sanctioning them.

I keep asking and saying the same thing in different threads, and no one seems to be addressing my point. Maybe I should stop saying it, but to me it's obvious: create a separate international federation for different disciplines.

Want international free pistol competitions every year and the ISSF doesn't include it in World Cup? Hold a separate event.

I find it strange that so many hold the Olympics and the ISSF as the be-all and end-all of shooting sports and think that without them the sports are dead. While conversely, there are all the complaints that shooting sports get zero coverage during the Olympics or that no one outside shooting has a clue about ISSF world events. If they get zero coverage, why care so much if the ISSF or IOC include specific disciplines or not?

Have national and international shooting federations lobby to have all Olympic level facilities be capable of hosting the dropped events (and non-Olympic events) and hold those events before or after the Olympics in the facilities.

IPSC, Revolver, PPC, Cowboy Action, Muzzleloading, and how many others have local, regional, national, and international associations, competitions, and gatherings without any representation in either IOC or ISSF sanctionned events.

Many disciplines that ARE recognised and included by the IOC and ISSF have separate federations and associations that only interface with the IOC through their national IOC recognised body to send athletes to the OGs.

It seems that neither the IOC nor the ISSF have been of much use creating lasting infrastructure to promote national and international competition either. Nor making any impact on national laws either. They might not be political bodies, but someone back when Canada enacted the firearms act managed to use the UIT and UIT equipment to keep then current and future equipment used in competition exempted from the definition of prohibited firearms.

Leave the IOC and ISSF to organise how they want and organise locally, nationally, and internationally through discipline specific associations.

Design, promote, and build good international level facilities in cooperation with as many international federations and competitions as possible (Look at the wonderful shooting facilities Toronto now has thanks to the Pan-Am games, which hopefully can be used for ISSF or Olympic competition as well). Don't build Olympic boondoggles designed for spectators and pomp and circumstance. Promote the sport using modern technology and media.

Etc. etc.

[Chia]

I agree with Slarty's point from a theoretical level, but practically the problem is money. The IOC has it, the competitors do not. Therefore, IOC calls the shots.

Running a serious sports federation on no money is impossible in the United States. So unless anyone happens to be sitting on a pile of money and feel like starting a sports league...

And no, I'm not sitting on a pile of money. I wish I was. I would be willing to devote pro bono hours to assisting in setting something like that up, but getting it would need to be a hell of a lot more than just one person. We'd need funding, logistical support, accounting, venue, advertising (logos come from somewhere), complex web design (and I don't mean that crappy railroad station system complex, I mean something actually worth a damn), business plans (even nonprofits have them), volunteers for events, equipment, sponsors, etc.

It's not a small undertaking to be done halfhazardly. You'd probably be looking at 500k startup, unknown upkeep (I'm going to ballpark guess 100k for a whopping two staff and occasionally fixing a shitty target system).

[SlartyBartFast]

I agree with Slarty's point from a theoretical level, but practically the problem is money. The IOC has it, the competitors do not. Therefore, IOC calls the shots.

Last I checked, the IOC doesn't provide a single penny to the coffers of shooting in any country. The only people that get money are the IOC recognised associations (FTC-SFC in Canada, USAS in the US). And how much of that money do they get from membership compared to government or sponsorship?

My beef with FTC-SFC is they don't even run postal matches. Hell, they don't even keep their website running and won't respond to emails saying that contact information is wrong.

I doubt many of the Olympic discipline federations (NSCA) or the non-Olympic discipline federations (PPC, IPSC, IDPA) run their operations with anywhere near 500K + 100k/y.

Here's an eye opener! After writing the above I searched for our provincial shooting federation (http://www.fqtir.qc.ca/) and found their annual report (http://sfc-ftc.ca/assets/docs/agm/2016/ ... _Print.pdf) and am gobsmacked to learn they run on revenues of $1 399 692/yr for 2016 with 6017 active members (in 2015) up from 4617 in 2012. And in 2015, 9617 people took the restricted firearms safety course (required to get a Possession and acquisition licence, and only the FQT provides training) and 4460 people completed their "law 9" course (last step before joining a gun club with permission to acquire restricted weapons for target shooting, and again only the FQT provides this training).

How's that for a firearms organisation and the state of firearms ownership and sports in a communist gun hating province?

[Chia]

I'll leave the funding discussions about the ISSF to people who understand its structure better than me.

As to my discussion of starting a federation...this is an independent audit of USA Shooting in 2014.
http://www.usashooting.org/library/2014audit.pdf Page five (PDF pages, not the pages in the document). Look on page six at the USOC grant. Page seven is liabilities. Take a look at how the prices for competitions versus olympic training programs break down, as well as direct marketing and fundraising.

This stuff isn't cheap. That's all upkeep, staff, advertising/marketing and replacing durables as they die. That's almost three million dollars, even excluding the mysteriously balancing elite athletics program. And, to be blunt with you, USA Shooting ain't exactly a mainstream and super popular organization. It's fairly small.

500k is probably lowballing a successful sporting league startup. That would include targets, venue (with electronic fully functional targets you would need a warehouse somewhere...probably a fixer-upper), professional website and marketing services, SEO, accounting, licensing/contracts/compliance, and so on. You would have to make a splash and probably have sponsorship from at least one of the manufacturers to be taken seriously. That takes marketing, fundraising, and connections. That isn't cheap either.

Here's an eye opener! After writing the above I searched for our provincial shooting federation (http://www.fqtir.qc.ca/) and found their annual report (http://sfc-ftc.ca/assets/docs/agm/2016/ ... _Print.pdf) and am gobsmacked to learn they run on revenues of $1 399 692/yr for 2016 with 6017 active members (in 2015) up from 4617 in 2012. And in 2015, 9617 people took the restricted firearms safety course (required to get a Possession and acquisition licence, and only the FQT provides training) and 4460 people completed their "law 9" course (last step before joining a gun club with permission to acquire restricted weapons for target shooting, and again only the FQT provides this training).

How's that for a firearms organisation and the state of firearms ownership and sports in a communist gun hating province?

Pretty darn good! Monopolies help, but I'm glad that they're doing well.

[rfpforever]

As the old ISSF (2002) proposal to drop a separate 25m range from the IOC requirements haD sunk slowly into the west (changing the 50m range over to 25m and back again to fit in with both PET and competition requirements does not fit in the current Olympic program), now that 50m prone is going, is it time for a fresh look at getting rid of a separate 25m range?

Can we look forward to the internal range politics of changing a 50m range over to 25m so the RFP, Womens 25m, CF and/or Standard Pistol shooters can have a go on the 'combined' range?

With the proposed new program for World Cups and Olympics, the 10m range personnel are going to be busy!

[Hemmers]

Last I checked, the IOC doesn't provide a single penny to the coffers of shooting in any country.

That as may be, it is significantly easier to get sponsorship for Olympic events than non OG events.

As I'm sure you know hailing from Quebec, those of us Commonwealth Countries are waiting to see how the Commonwealth Shooting Federation is going to respond to these proposals and how far the CGs will homologate to the OG programme. They're basically the same except the CGs retained Women's Prone & Trap, and Fullbore Rifle.

In the UK the CG funding is moderately unaffected by OG changes because Olympics are funded at GB level, whilst Commonwealths are funded at Home Nation level, so as long as the CWGs retain Prone/FP/etc, there will be funding at ENG/SCO/WAL/NI level.

However in other countries (e.g. Canada? Australia?) there is perhaps a question mark depending on their exact structure - they're one nation, not operating our weird two-tier GB/Home Nation split. I don't know how Australia or Canada specifically arrange their funding, but I imagine in some countries if Prone/FP goes out the Olympics, there may be difficulties in the shooting federation being able to fund those disciplines in pursuit of the CGs (possibly to a lower level if funding is not in fact entirely prioritised to the Olympics)?

Sponsors love multi-sport Games. The IOC may not fund shooting, but the inclusion of shooting within the Olympics is a boon to attracting sponsors. There's a whole economy dependent on the Olympic status to draw in sponsorship money.

[David Levene]

As the old ISSF (2002) proposal to drop a separate 25m range from the IOC requirements haD sunk slowly into the west (changing the 50m range over to 25m and back again to fit in with both PET and competition requirements does not fit in the current Olympic program), now that 50m prone is going, is it time for a fresh look at getting rid of a separate 25m range?

At London 2012, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014, the 10m and 50m ranges were combined.

With the Mens Prone and Free Pistol going there will be less pressure on the reduced number of 50m training points that were available in the run-up to the 10m events.

In London the full conversion of the 10m points to 50m was done in 1.5 days. In Glasgow, with the lessons learned from London, it was done overnight.

[SlartyBartFast]

At London 2012, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014, the 10m and 50m ranges were combined.

I hadn't seen the London 2012 shooting or the venues till I looked them up just now. Quite an innovative use of temporary structures. I'm very impressed.

IMO, to make international competition affordable one of two things needs to be done. Either a limited number of installations on regular rotation or the use of temporary structures either transported from site to site or easily duplicated.

IMO, big empty facilities gathering dust and slowly decaying that never get to relive their glory days (and literally only days) are depressing. Better that the competition facilities are temporary and a reasonable sized permanent installation is built for local training and competition.

For example, the Pan-Am shooting centre in Toronto looks wonderful. But how difficult will it be to maintain that size of facility with only local training and shooting? And if I understand correctly, it is built somewhere that originally had only trap and skeet. So is there even enough local interest to keep smaller facilities going there in that location?

Seeing as OG venues are used immediately after the OG for the Paralympic Games, couldn't/shouldn't all the non-OG events lobby to have a World Cup event (minus the events in the OG ASAP following or just prior to the OG. Might not get the limelight (but who are we kidding, shooting has no limelight at the OG), but might get some attention and will reduce the costs of holding an international event.

[Mike M.]

IMO, to make international competition affordable one of two things needs to be done. Either a limited number of installations on regular rotation or the use of temporary structures either transported from site to site or easily duplicated.

IMO, big empty facilities gathering dust and slowly decaying that never get to relive their glory days (and literally only days) are depressing. Better that the competition facilities are temporary and a reasonable sized permanent installation is built for local training and competition.

Concur to a degree. The electronic scoring apparatus, in particular, probably should be an ISSF-owned asset moved from venue to venue. Although I will say that having shot on those at the 2012 World Muzzle-Loading Championships, they are great for spectators. We had the targets being cycled through on big displays so people could check on how the competitors were doing. Not to mention having near-real-time statistics.

As for the venues, I'd suggest coordinating with other shooting organizations. While I can't speak for the MLAIC as an organization, I can say that a range suitable for an ISSF World Championship will meet most of our needs nicely. In 2014, we shot on the range in Granada (actually Las Gabias), Spain, the week after ISSF cleared out. A range with multiple major matches might do better than a one-use temporary facility.

Though I will admit that anyone putting up a facility needs to have a plan for its future use.