TargetTalk

renzo wrote:

David Levene wrote:
If they run the new team events at World Cups, which is what the IOC want, then QPs could be allocated in the same way as for individual events. It is extremely unlikely that those QPs would result in a requirement for twice the number of village bed spaces as it's a fair bet that most of the countries will already have at least one QP in the individual events. I can't think of any reason why a country wouldn't want an athlete they select for the individual events to also compete in the pairs.

As I understand your position, you`re probable referring (corect me if I`m wrong) to the "lottery" system used in the mixed international team events at the YOG.

Most definitely NOT. It would be simple for countries to enter a pair into the mixed gender team event.

SlartyBartFast wrote:

jhmartin wrote:Since it is a stupid requirement .... just as setting a required medal count for each country would be, push it down to the federations.

Whenever you set a mandatory quota like that, it will ALWAYS be unfair to some and an advantage to others.

Bring the best

So easy for a man to say. Men have benifitted from a sexist advantage for decades with men's only free pistol and prone events.

Should the winter Olympics get rid of women's hockey and hockey be made mixed? If it's only about a genderless "Bring the best", why treat different sports differently?

The "stupid requirement" is that the best men and the best women be recognised in each and every sport represented at the Olympics.

Women in the US shoot, have shot and will shoot prone events. Some will do so against the top men in their groups and beat them. Margaret Murdoch beat a lot of men in international and national competition. Ruby Fox using the pistol (when allowed to compete against men in National competition as opposed to not being allowed in International Competition) beat them as well. Then we have Nancy Tompkins and her daughters Sherri and Michele Gallagher. They also do quite well in National and International prone and position competition out to 1000 yards. I think that I mentioned Ginny Thrasher earlier, but luckily the NCAA doesn't tell her that she can't compete on equal footing with her air rifle or small bore rifle in mixed competition.

http://www.usashooting.org/12-the-team/ ... y-thrasher

jmdavis wrote:Women in the US shoot, have shot and will shoot prone events.

I haven't argued that women don't shoot those events. There are women worldwide that shoot prone in ISSF competitions up to and including the the World Championships. The discussion is about Olympic events, and women don't have an Olympic prone event.

Worldwide st the local level, I'm sure there are women that shoot centerfire, rapidfire, and free pistol. But they don't even get ISSF events.

These women compete with and beat men in competition. Because they are that Good. They also win the Women's award for these mixed competitions. Margaret Murdoch tied to win the Olympics in 1976, won Pan Am, National and other international matches competing against men. The Gallaghers and Tomkins compete head to head with Men as well and win.

I believe that the IOC wants equal outcomes (medal count) more than they want equal opportunity. I think that their methods are unfair to the best women shooters because they don't get to be the best. The only get the chance to be the best woman.

jmdavis wrote:I believe that the IOC wants equal outcomes (medal count) more than they want equal opportunity. I think that their methods are unfair to the best women shooters because they don't get to be the best. The only get the chance to be the best woman.

Then why not fold women's ice hockey into men's at the winter Olympics? Why not eliminate all women's competition? Those runners and swimmers are only managing to be the best of the women...

You and others keep beating this dead horse. Equal competition and equal participants between men and women, with established maximums for number of participants at the games, is the IOC goal.

And the ISSF has no say in changing that goal. And as the ISSF is neither gender neutral nor offers all competition to both genders separately, and the shooting world has had no problem with women being under-represented and lacking disciplines in the Olympics that many men have said are crucial to be kept, the IOC has no lessons to learn from the perspective of which version of "fair" is "most fair".

Did I suggest that we eliminate all women competition? Did I suggest that women and men could compete equally in hockey?

I said that women could, can and will beat men in prone shooting. I said that US women in NCAA competition regularly beat men in mixed teams in position and air rifle. I then said that I believed the IOC wanted equal outcomes in terms of medal counts rather than equal opportunities.

Thus far you have not presented an argument that refutes the statements or the conclusions.

The argument that I can think of is that there would be a period of fewer women's medals as they adjusted to longer matches and or more competition. But in the end the winner of the Gold would be the best MAN or WOMAN in the Olympics not the best man and best woman.

But my goal is to save Free Pistol and Prone rifle regardless of whether the competitors are male or female. The original post tries to do that. I thought it would largely be supported by shooters, and it seems to be.

jmdavis wrote:I then said that I believed the IOC wanted equal outcomes in terms of medal counts rather than equal opportunities.

Which i acknowledged.

SlartyBartFast wrote:Equal competition and equal participants between men and women, with established maximums for number of participants at the games, is the IOC goal.

You and others think that it would be acceptable to add women by making it a mixed event then see what happens. That ship has sailed. The IOC has declared the rules that all IOC member sports federations must adhere to and the timeline in which it has to happen.

The IOC wants to see the same number of athletes, the same number of events, and same number of medal ceremonies from men and women. And they want the total number of athletes and events capped.

They want women to have equal time in the limelight to promote women participating in sport. They dumped mixed events before and are unlikely to bring them back in the near future. So the only type of mixed event that would be acceptable to the IOC would be mixed teams (and you can't raise the number of athletes attending the Olympic to create the teams).

And what the IOC wants, at their event, from all sports, is all the argument they need.

People seem to be stuck on trying to find some other solution than the one the IOC wants. And I will assume the IOC doesn't want the change to be in name only. If the ISSF was to get an exemption from the IOC wishes and were allowed to declare OG events mixed. And if free pistol was made mixed at the OG, without increasing the number of athletes, how many female competitors would there be while free pistol remains a men's only sport in the ISSF?

Hopefully people wake up and start making inclusion and equality between men's and women's participation an Issue at the ISSF. There are 5 more male disciplines than female disciplines at ISSF events and world championships.

According to ISSF competitions:
women are 80% as capable as men in
Double Trap
women are 67% as capable as men in
10m Air Pistol
10m Air Rifle
10m Running Target
women are 60% as capable as men in
Skeet
Trap
women are 50% as capable as men in
50m Rifle 3 Positions
And women are incapable of
25m Center Fire Pistol
25m Rapid Fire Pistol
25m Standard Pistol
50m Pistol
50m Running Target
50m Running Target Mixed
300m Standard Rifle

Based on those evaluations of women's performance in shooting sports, the ISSF and the national shooting federations have a long way to go before they can have any claim to know the correct way to integrate women and promote their participation in sport.

Can the ISSF seriously argue to the IOC that women stand an equal chance and opportunity in a suddenly mixed FP discipline when in 10m AP they're only 67% as endurant as the men?

And if women are considered less capable than men in so many disciplines, hard to argue that making a discipline for which there is no international competition for women suddenly mixed would be a good idea or have any hope of achieving the real results desired in time.

Well, equestrian is a totally mixed sport, with 90% of men, and rarelly a medal to a woman, and nobody yells at an injustice, it's accepted fair by everyone women and men. (And please don't say all the physical part is done by the horse, that's wrong).

By saying women are XX% as capable as men, it has to be compared with the actual ratio of women competing in the area concerned.
There are less women practicing shooting, so less possibilities to see a potentiel Olympic shooter-girl 200% as capable as men.

Piefou wrote:Well, equestrian is a totally mixed sport, with 90% of men, and rarelly a medal to a woman, and nobody yells at an injustice, it's accepted fair by everyone women and men. (And please don't say all the physical part is done by the horse, that's wrong).

By saying women are XX% as capable as men, it has to be compared with the actual ratio of women competing in the area concerned.
There are less women practicing shooting, so less possibilities to see a potentiel Olympic shooter-girl 200% as capable as men.

The percentages I gave are the differences in shots that make up the different disciplines.

If shooting had a history of mixed events there might not be a problem. And the 2012 results show a lot of women winners.

let me 'splain to you why there is always a guy who is better at something than a woman.

The combination X and Y chromosomes allows some crazy stuff to happen.
There are more dumb men than dumb women, but also more smart men than smart women, there are more rich men than rich women, but also more poor men than poor women.

Women are squeezed into the average, while men have this crazy spread.

For every strong trait in a woman, you'll find a hundred guys who will be better, simply because their genetics fit the task so well. There will always be men who are faster, stronger, more agile. Not because they train harder, but because of the huge genetic diversity.

Women represent stability, they nest, while men are thrown into the world in hope their trait will fit the current environment. It comes at a price however, for every 100 smart guys, there will be a 100, who are miserable, in jail, depressed, have genetic illnesses (like color blindness, which only rarely occurs in women, because they have two X chromosomes and the defect is then simply turned off by using the good genes on the other chromosome) etc. There are way more men in prisons than women.

This is the world as it is, and because of that we don't have mixed events.

The US NRA high-power Across the Course (200,300,600 yards) record of 2396 with 161x is held by a woman and beats the previous record of 2389-138x by David Tubb.She is a member of the 500 club (500/500 across the course. Her sister and mother regularly win national and international competition for prone and F class.

Prone may be the most gender neutral of the shooting sports.

I don't think its right that the SSSF are throwing Rapid Fire under the bus either. I don't think any national organisation should be doing that. Its not reasonable to be complaining that its 'unfair' Free is being dumped - which does have very low participation at the club level - and then dumping on rapid.
Rapid can at least (now) be shot on a 25m range with a standard pistol, compared with an esoteric free pistol which has no other use.

Rapid one of the older pistol disciplines at the Olympics, I think.

Its the only pistol match with any dynamic element, and therefore of mild interest to a spectator - compared with people competing to stand more motionless than the next person.

Its one of the few rifle or pistol matches where an individual performance can really be observed - A line of 20 people shooting standard pistol simultaneously does not make for interesting viewing - and does make for a wall of noise.

If anything its the one shooting match where equipment is the least part of the equation. The accuracy requirement is low, its the greatest test of dynamic skill.

I'd personally prefer to see Sport pistol over Standard pistol as a mixed match, sport has more connection to the heritage of duelling from which the Olympic pistol shooting (and fencing) events are really descended.
Standard has no real heritage as far as I am aware. Sport pistol is already in the Olympics so it would hardly be a stretch. Who knows, maybe we'd be able to squeeze in centrefire one day.

James,

nobody shoots rapid fire, nobody. Participation on a local level here is pretty much zero. No ranges available. And where they are available, nobody has the right gun, or the will to spend on ammo required for that event. Can't say that about the free pistol. You shoot where they shoot rifle... it's not like you build an extra range for the free...

25m women's events is less watched than the 50m free for example

also, "more interesting for spectators" isn't confirmed by the number of views for the event.

Also, the RFP is equipment dependent like no other event, because if you don't have the right gun, you have zero chance of scoring well in 4 seconds series.

hundert wrote:James,

nobody shoots rapid fire, nobody. Participation on a local level here is pretty much zero. No ranges available. And where they are available, nobody has the right gun, or the will to spend on ammo required for that event. Can't say that about the free pistol. You shoot where they shoot rifle... it's not like you build an extra range for the free...

25m women's events is less watched than the 50m free for example

also, "more interesting for spectators" isn't confirmed by the number of views for the event.

Also, the RFP is equipment dependent like no other event, because if you don't have the right gun, you have zero chance of scoring well in 4 seconds series.

Really, I think what hurts rapid fire more than anything is folks looking for excuses to not shoot it. Folks who say stuff like:

1. You can't shoot it if you don't have turning targets. Total B.S. A shot timer works just fine. If you want to be an overachiever, many decent shot timers have input/output ports so you can rig up a visual start/stop signal. I've used this when shooting at UT-Austin a while back.

2. You need the right gun. The same gun folks are shooting for standard pistol will work just fine for RFP. Heck, the rules were intentionally changed to make standard pistols competitive in RFP. For folks just getting started, you could even start with guns used in .22 bullseye events (minus the dots), anything from Ruger Mark I-IVs, Marvel .22 conversions on 1911s, IZH-35s, Hammerli Xesse/Sig TrailSides, to AW-93s and Pardini SPs.

3. You need the right ammo. Please, give me a break. The 10-ring on a RFP target is about 4 inches. You'd be hard-pressed to find .22 ammo that couldn't group that tight in a decent gun at 25m. If you want to talk about recoil, the lightest recoiling decent ammo I've shot in my Pardini was Wolf Match Extra and that can still be had for under $10/box...waaaay cheaper than just about any centerfire ammo. If you're cheap, and don't mind a little more recoil, you can find CCI Standard Velocity for under $5/box, all day long.

4. Not enough ranges. This is somewhat legit, depending on where you are, public vs. private range, business vs. club, etc. That said, the basic requirements (25 meter length, width for 5 target stands) are *much* less than for most other handgun competitions (USPSA, IDPA, cowboy action, etc). Even outdoor bullseye is supposed to be at 50 yards. For throughput, you could probably shoot a 30-round stage in about 3-5 minutes per shooter, from first shot to last shot...including time to change targets after each stage (score off line while next shooter is getting ready), you can probably do about 15 stages/hour per bay. In two hours, you could probably have 15 shooters finish a 2-stage, 60 round match...double that if you can set up two bays.

This whole poor attitude of "if you're not competitive at the International-level and can't run a match like they do at the Olympics, don't even bother," absolutely kills grassroots participation, and without grassroots participation, you aren't going to have very many folks participating at any higher levels...and guess what? The smaller the pool of participants, the less chance of finding folks who can compete at the international-level, and the less interest in the discipline, even within the shooting community.

you pretty much confirmed everything I said. "You can shoot any gun, but I have a Pardini" lmao!
We over here shoot an equivalent of 10 dollar cents per shot with the cheapest ammo available (it used to be much cheaper like a year or two ago!), and in rapid fire, in one hour, you sink 300 shots an hour.

We have a state wide competition here which happens once a year, there were five RFP shooters... five. And the scores said they don't really shoot rapid fire, probably registered for fun. And that's a big competition. Free pistol wasn't much better, but still 16 competitors, air pistol men had 140.

with my free and air pistols I already have everything to win the Olympics, theoretically that is, for rapid fire I'd need to sink a fortune.

I'm actually one of a very few people who follows rapid fire, I know the names of many shooters, ekimov, klimov, reitz, quixquampoix, sanderson, and watch the competitions

hundert wrote:James,

nobody shoots rapid fire, nobody. Participation on a local level here is pretty much zero. No ranges available. And where they are available, nobody has the right gun, or the will to spend on ammo required for that event. Can't say that about the free pistol. You shoot where they shoot rifle... it's not like you build an extra range for the free...

25m women's events is less watched than the 50m free for example

also, "more interesting for spectators" isn't confirmed by the number of views for the event.

Also, the RFP is equipment dependent like no other event, because if you don't have the right gun, you have zero chance of scoring well in 4 seconds series.

"The right gun" is a standard pistol, or you have no chance in the 10s series, just like you need "the right gun" for free, "the right gun" for air etc etc.
I don't remember how much "the right gun" costs for prone rifle. Whats your point?
Standard pistols are much more common than free pistols.

Ranges are standard pistol ranges, same for standard pistol, sport pistol, centrefire. 25m pistol ranges are a lot more available than 50m in most places.

"But no-one shoots rapid fire"
How many people do you know who practice 100m hurdles? Shot put? Bob-sleigh? Its probably 10 per country, same for practically every Olympic event.

hundert wrote:you pretty much confirmed everything I said. "You can shoot any gun, but I have a Pardini" lmao!
We over here shoot an equivalent of 10 dollar cents per shot with the cheapest ammo available (it used to be much cheaper like a year or two ago!), and in rapid fire, in one hour, you sink 300 shots an hour.

We have a state wide competition here which happens once a year, there were five RFP shooters... five. And the scores said they don't really shoot rapid fire, probably registered for fun. And that's a big competition. Free pistol wasn't much better, but still 16 competitors, air pistol men had 140.

with my free and air pistols I already have everything to win the Olympics, theoretically that is, for rapid fire I'd need to sink a fortune.

I'm actually one of a very few people who follows rapid fire, I know the names of many shooters, ekimov, klimov, reitz, quixquampoix, sanderson, and watch the competitions

If that's all you got out of my response, your reading comprehension skills could use some work. I actually started with a Ruger Mark II. If find it hard to believe you're paying 10 dollars per shot...that would be 500 dollars for a box of 50 rounds. If so, then I agree, it's likely no one can afford to shoot RFP (or any other shooting sport) in your country.

I guarantee you don't have everything you need to win the Olympics in free pistol. :-)

your reading comprehension skills could use some work, I wrote dollar CENTS. There are other cents on this planet, there's euro cents, there's a 50 cent.

with my free and air pistols I already have everything to win the Olympics, theoretically that is, for rapid fire I'd need to sink a fortune.

And yes, with my rapid fire pistols I would have to sink a fortune to win free or air.
I don't have any idea what you're trying to say.

It seems to me to be unreasonable for any national body to be selling one group of participants down the river in favour of another.

The reply from the IOC to Pistol Australia states "The IOC is serious when it states that it wants to achieve gender equality in all sports by Tokyo 2020."

What does this mean?

Looking here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... _in_sports
"Women are excluded from the 25m rapid fire pistol, the 50m pistol and the 50m rifle prone events.[20] Men are excluded from the 25m pistol event.[20] From 1996 to 2004, women were allowed to participate the double trap competition. The women's event was taken off the Olympic program after the 2004 Summer Olympics.[21] Final shooting for women was discontinued in international competition as a result."

It seems they want women to compete in the same matches on an equal footing, not invent some strange mixed pairs competition which no other sport has except ice-skating.
So fine, let women compete in RFP and 50m, let men compete in sport pistol. Problem solved. What the ISSF is trying to do makes no sense.

JamesH wrote:It seems they want women to compete in the same matches on an equal footing, not invent some strange mixed pairs competition which no other sport has except ice-skating.

Badminton? Tennis?