Statement From Abhinav Bindra

[jhmartin]

Can this not be achieved in mixed gender events by having 50% participation quota for both genders?
This way everyone participating will have equal chance to be successful. Is this not what equality means?

Google some international results. You will find that other than air rifle, the men beat the women most of the time. Therefore it does not result in the "gender equality".

Be VERY careful pulling results out of various matches.
Give the women a chance (to train for the event) and then see how they do..... you have to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

[j-team]

Be VERY careful pulling results out of various matches.
Give the women a chance (to train for the event) and then see how they do..... you have to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

Can only use World Cup and Olympic matches to compare and as previously stated air rifle is the only match the women are equal in. We are talking the Olympics here nothing else. Show me the evidence that women would win the same number of Olympic medals as men if the events were mixed.

For goodness sake, when will people stop banging on about mixed individual matches. It isn't going to happen. Reason is IOC want gender equality. The only way that will seen to be happening is if the women get the same amount of medal as men, and to do that they have to have the same number of events. I'm not in favour of the proposal, but unless you understand where it is coming from then the suggestions and comments about "making them all mixed" are crap!

[jhmartin]

Well, the solution seems to be a mixed gender event.
I AIN'T sayin I like it....

What this is doing is pretty much making sure that 2020-Tokyo is the last 50m OG

[j-team]

Well, the solution seems to be a mixed gender event.
I AIN'T sayin I like it....

What this is doing is pretty much making sure that 2020-Tokyo is the last 50m OG

A solution is something that gives you the desired outcome, which in this case is "gender equality". Mixed individual events WILL NOT DO THAT! Do you honestly think it will?

[shaky hands]

Sometimes it appear that the western world in its fixation on "erasing the difference between a man and a woman" is doing too much of a good thing.

[Piefou]

Another olympic sport, also often seen as a "non-sport", is horse riding.
This sport is one of the first to been totally mixed.

Indeed, 3/4 of the participants are men, but the gender-equality is always seen as a good thing in this sport.
And when a woman win, she's applauded even more than men.


In shooting we can have the same events for everybody.
And if people really think women can't physically do 60/120 shots (IMO stupid thinking), i will be happy to shoot 40 or 50 with my female friends.

[David Levene]

An interesting exchange between Rajmond Debevec and Abhinav Bindra:-

Rajmond Debevec <rajmond.debevec@siol.net>
21:48 (pred 4 minutami)
Hi Abhinav,
I am answering you to your mail, but as a follower of transparency and our mails also do not consist personal things, I will post our correspondence public at the same time.
I am sorry we missed to meet at all the World Cups we both had participated this year, but it is a fact I usually arrived later due to participating only 50 m events, when you left competitions after finnishing 10 m already.
I deeply respect your fantastic shooting career and regret your retirement as an active shooter after Rio Games.
I am aware of Agenda 2020 recommendation and I support the gender equality, but haven't had a chance to see any official IOC document preffering neither air rifle towards prone nor air pistol towards free pistol.
It would be really sad if IOC makes pressure to the ISSF and insists in any kind of demands without any written documents. If there exists such a document, then the ISSF should post it public.
Only in such a case when there would be no other possibility to keep our sport on the Olympic programme, I would not accept, but would understand such a crucial decision to erase the prone event with the highest number of shooters worldwide and the free pistol, which was, thanks to french champion in this event and father of Olympic Games of modern era, baron Pierre de Coubertin, on the programme of OG since first games back in 1896.
I really feel the AC didn't do its work proper in this case. By my opinion the decision was made just too easy without consideration of thousands and thousands of prone and free pistol shooters with their dreams to come true once to participate OG.
The result of AC voting 4:2 gives me confirmation that at least 2 members had similar concerns.
So in generally, I personally believe that AC should not give the ISSF an alibi with a decision to completely erase any event from the Olympic programme. AC suppose to represent all shooters in all olympic events, so it should not afford to discriminate any event on the account of another. By my opinion the AC should abstain on this matter.
As the ISSF decision is known and the recommendation was supported by AC already, I am afraid the irreparable damage has been done to our beloved sport.
With best regards,
Rajmond

2016-11-30 6:02 GMT+01:00 Abhinav Bindra
Dear Rajmond
I hope this mail finds you well. I have been seeing all your comments and ofcourse I have the deepest respect for you and your comments.
However I am unable to understand why do you feel the working of the AC has not been satisfactory. Since 2015 we have tried our very best to be transparent and make sure that the athletes voice is put forward.
Regarding the agenda 2020 recommendation I understood that it was going to very hard and there is no solution which would satisfy all.
It was made very clear by the IOC liaison that 10 m is the preferred choice.
However I still did not want one view to be the factor dictating the recommendation of The AC. Every point of view received was put up and discussed. I decided that the only way to go forward was a vote.
I hope you will appreciate that I tried to conduct the matters in the most fair manner within the committee.
The final evaluation report of each event by the IOC is going to be published soon and that I believe will be the ultimate deciding factor.
It's hard to answer every post on FB so if you have anything to ask I will be more than happy to answer.
Regards
Abhinav

[Chia]

Thanks for posting that. That pretty much confirms the scuttlebutt from this thread.

$%^#ing IOC.