TargetTalk

PirateJohn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:54 pm I've been saying this for a long time. If the Olympics did away with gender segregation, there would be more room for different shooting events that have been retired over the years such as double trap, running game target, etc.

brakarzac wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 2:02 am

PirateJohn wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:54 pm I've been saying this for a long time. If the Olympics did away with gender segregation, there would be more room for different shooting events that have been retired over the years such as double trap, running game target, etc.

If the events are combined, you would find that some countries and a lot of men/women would stop shooting competitively as the pool to qualify would be doubled from the current numbers!

I don't know what we can't leave this topic alone and just have specific Mens and Women's events. Its worked for many years and no need to change it!

Azmodan wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 3:21 am if you look at last qualification score in world cups / world championships (the score of the 8th and 9th competitor) you will see that the women are usually 5 to 10 points below men

Gwhite wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 8:53 am They didn't used to have separate events, because nobody figured women could ever compete at the same level. They didn't prohibit women from competing, it was just unheard of. Then Margaret Murdoch came along and showed otherwise:

https://olympics.com/en/news/she-deserv ... ing-the-ol

The fragile male egos in most of the world couldn't deal with being beaten by a woman, so they set up separate events. They also adjusted the courses of fire so you couldn't make an easy direct comparison between the scores (i.e. 60 vs 40 shots for air pistol).

Things are slowly changing, but it will be a while before they just have open events (again). There is still a problem with perception that women can't compete on an even level with men. It's hard to recruit new women shooters because many of them don't believe they can compete against the men. Fortunately there are now tons of good counterexamples, if you can get them to stick around long enough to listen.

When we recruit new shooters for the college team I help coach, it helps enormously to have a couple women shooters present and on our publicity posters. Our team actually usually has more women than men, and the Team Captain is often a woman.

m1963 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 12:52 pm Classifications exist so individuals can seek to excel in each class. Marksman, Sharpshooter, Expert. Male, female, junior, open, senior. Each grouping provides opportunity, "steps."

Now, adding a super step where the expert male competed against the expert female within a given class; or some other variation, would be intriguing.

I can tell you, my daughter would strive to beat, and most likely would beat, most males in her given class.

Gwhite wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:30 pm Having helped coach close to a dozen top level women collegiate shooters, the key thing has been that they've never shot before. They don't arrive with any bad habits or preconceived notions about shooting, and they typically have never seen a Dirty Harry movie. We start everyone out with air pistols, and when they can break 500 in a match a couple times, they get to start shooting .22's.

The vast majority of the guys we get who have shot before don't do all that well. They have bad habits, were introduced to shooting with large caliber handguns, or have watched too many action movies. Nowadays, I suspect a lot of them have also spent countless hours playing shoot-em-up video games. Some of them do OK, but it's pretty rare that they end up out-shooting the women.

We had one gal who sounded very promising. She had shot air pistol before, and had received coaching. She even had her own Steyr and Champion shooting glasses. It turns out this was all her parents' big idea, and she really wasn't all that interested in shooting. Her previous coach was an idiot, and had told her all kinds of nonsense. I suspect that soured her on shooting in general, which is a real shame. She dropped out in the first year.

renzo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 10:22 am

Gwhite wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:30 pm Having helped coach close to a dozen top level women collegiate shooters, the key thing has been that they've never shot before. They don't arrive with any bad habits or preconceived notions about shooting, and they typically have never seen a Dirty Harry movie. We start everyone out with air pistols, and when they can break 500 in a match a couple times, they get to start shooting .22's.

The vast majority of the guys we get who have shot before don't do all that well. They have bad habits, were introduced to shooting with large caliber handguns, or have watched too many action movies. Nowadays, I suspect a lot of them have also spent countless hours playing shoot-em-up video games. Some of them do OK, but it's pretty rare that they end up out-shooting the women.

We had one gal who sounded very promising. She had shot air pistol before, and had received coaching. She even had her own Steyr and Champion shooting glasses. It turns out this was all her parents' big idea, and she really wasn't all that interested in shooting. Her previous coach was an idiot, and had told her all kinds of nonsense. I suspect that soured her on shooting in general, which is a real shame. She dropped out in the first year.

It's exactly like that. I myself teach pistol shooting and have seen this scenario lots of time.

Also, Once I was talking to a friend who runs a driving school, and he concurred with what Gwhite posted, translated to driving: Women are much better pupils, and faster learners because of the absence of previous fantasies.