TargetTalk

I love that Dikec is becoming a viral meme. He's been an inspiration of mine for a while now because he's the only air pistol shooter regularly making World Cup finals who's older than I am.

You can love him AND indulge your masturbatory fantasies!

I get kind of tired trying to explain why he doesn't have a complete leather suit like a rifle athlete to those who just saw their first pistol match.
BTW why do they allow the leather suits in air rifle? I have a feeling they cost as much as the rifle. Might be better to get rid of them completely to lower the barrier to participation and make travel easier.

Hello there. Thank you for letting me join the forum.

As a former competitive high school shooter running on ISU rules back in the 1990s, the leather jackets and supportive gear are designed to stabilize positions for offhand kneeling and prone shooting in air rifle and smallbore. It's a fairly highly regulated affair at this point with issf requirements for shoe flexibility thickness of jackets things along those lines. (Which I totally have to refresh myself on!) Their effort is to keep it all equal and fair. (E. G., there was an era in the '80s and 90s where people would wear a ski boot on their kneeling leg so they could sit on the boot and not have to exert any energy to stay upright.)

It would fundamentally change the nature of the competition to remove that gear. However, I don't see that it needs to necessarily be prohibitively expensive either.

Part of it snowballs, because most of us just start out with the jacket for protection and support for our sling. All of the other stuff gets added along with elaborate rifles etc as you progress as often happens in the shooting sports.

The downside is absolutely a barrier to entry for expense and portability. I have skimmed The forum and seen some threads on that discussion so I won't belabor in here.

I do appreciate the welcome and I am happy to share and happy to learn and listen as well.

Be safe and be well. Thank you!