Olmps

Why Watch Shooting?

When the opening ceremony has been and gone, and

we finally get down to the sport, the first medal that will be won in London will be in shooting..The excruciating tension of the final rounds, in which the margins for error are minuscule, will provide a compelling start to the Games, if Beijing is anything to go by.. Shooting had the opening spot in 2008 too, and the gigantic weight of expectations generated by more than a billion Chinese fell on the shoulders of their star Du Li in the women’s 10m air rifle..Wilting under pressure, she lost out to the Czech shooter Katerina Emmons, who equalled the world record with a perfect 400 in the qualifying round..A few days later, to the roar of the hugely partisan home crowd, Du Li recovered from a poor start to pip Emmons for the gold in the 50m rifle, three positions, competition..

It might seem unlikely that a sport that is all about intense selfabsorption,static posture and micro-movements of the trigger finger could generate this kind of fervour in a live crowd or amongst a television audience, but over the last decade, efforts have been made to make shooting more spectator-friendly.. Crowds are no longer expected to maintain a rigid silence – indeed, in Beijing they were extremely partisan and raucous. . Clay pigeons now explode in puffs of purple smoke when hit.. Big screens and shoot-offs have been introduced to make the event more exciting, and tiny cameras are now placed on competitors’ guns. . Be patient. . Imagine what is going on behind the shooter’s sunglasses and blinkers.. Let the competition unfold and the margins of error diminish.. Enjoy the tension, for the pressure on spectators and competitors alike can be deliciously unbearable..

The Story of Shooting

Shooting as a target sport has its roots in Central

Europe..There are records of arquebus competitions sponsored by the municipal authorities in Geneva as early as the 1450s.. From the middle of the sixteenth century the leading edge of European rifle

technology was in Switzerland and Germany where they made guns that could shoot straight over a reasonable range – a basic precondition of target shooting..Across the Alps, in Italy and France shooting competitions were held on religious holidays..

In nineteenth-century Europe – especially in Scandinavia, Germany,France and Serbia – shooting was fostered by gymnastic clubs, where the sport was encouraged in a spirit of nationalistic, militarised self-defence.. In Switzerland, shooting became compulsory for schoolboys between the ages of sixteen and nineteen and a lifelong commitment to a citizens’ army meant shooting skills were widespread, while in France and Italy rifle skills were honed by legions of rural small bird hunters.. Meanwhile, in Britain and the USA, National Rifle Associations were established in the middle of the century with the dual intention of promoting shooting sports and raising the level of military marksmanship.. In Britain they signally failed in the latter task..After the South African War of 1899–1902 had exposed the disastrous state of shooting in the ranks of the army, the government supported the creation of civilian rifle clubs, providing them with free ammunition, in addition to subsidising rifles for members of the NRA..

While competitive rifle and pistol shooting evolved pri-

marily in a military milieu the shotgun as a sporting event has its roots in the hunting of birds in Britain and the United States.. Shooting grouse and pheasants is a seasonal activity and in the mid-nineteenth century there emerged a niche for a sport that could simulate the game shoot without the game. . Initial efforts included glass-ball shooting (as featured in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows), in which catapults – or traps – fired glass balls stuffed with bird feathers straight up into the air..Alongside live pigeon shooting, this simulated form of hunting formed a staple of marathon competitions between professional shooters like Captain Adam H.

Bogardus and Doc Carver..

However much the glass ball was refined (it was coloured, covered in ridges, filled with flour, explosives and shredded newspaper), it could not simulate the flight of a bird.. Inventors experimented with pitch and concrete variants, wooden balls, tin pigeons and brass globes filled with charcoal, but all proved disappointing.. In 1880

shots in each position in the qualifying round.. In both competitions, the top eight go into the final where they have ten standing shots at the target..The target they are aiming at is just over 15cm in diameter and the ten-point ring at the centre a minuscule 1..4cm across..

50m prone

A men’s event in which sixty shots are fired in the

qualifying round and ten in the final..

10m air rifle

Male competitors shoot sixty times in the opening

round; women forty times.. In both competitions, the top eight go into the final for the usual 10 shots..The target for this event is even smaller, just 4..5 cm in diameter with a bulls eye of 0..5cm diameter..That is really very small – smaller than a 5p piece!

Pistol

50m pistol

A men’s event in which shooters have 120 minutes to

fire sixty shots at a target that’s 5cm across and 50m away..

25m rapid fire

A men’s event in which shooters fire six rounds of

five shots, within time limits (4, 6 or 8 seconds)..There are five different targets, slightly larger than those used in free pistol shooting.. In one of the series of shots all five targets must be aimed at..

25m pistol

A women’s event that combines free and rapid fire

shooting..The qualification round consists of thirty free shots and thirty rapid fire shots..The final round is just rapid fire..

10m air pistol

men have 105 minutes for sixty shots, women 75 minutes

for forty.The final eight in each competition fire a further 10 shots each..

Shotgun

Trap

Competitors move round five shooting stations,

taking two shots at a single target at each.. Men shoot five circuits (25 targets), women three (15 targets)..The top six progress to the final, in which they shoot at the same number of targets as in the first round but this time have only one pop at each..

Skeet

Competitors move round eight shooting stations and

take it in turn to fire at two targets, one thrown from a high position and one from a low position, with a random gap of zero to three seconds between their release..The first target mimics an oncoming bird approaching swiftly overhead, while the path of the second approximates to the flight of a grouse launching itself from the heather..

Double Trap

This event is contested only by men; the women’s

version was dropped from the Olympic programme after 2004. . Shooters fire one shot at each of two targets released simultaneously on set paths..They rotate through five shooting stations, firing thirty shots from each.. Six finalists shoot an extra round of fifty shots and add their score to the qualifying round score to determine the winner.

The Finer Points

What to Watch

One of the best events for spectators is the shotgun,

in which you get a nice swing of the arm as the shooters track the clays out of the traps and pleasing puffs of purple smoke when the targets shatter.. The rapid fire pistol competitions have a manic intensity, particularly the rounds in which shooters are firing at more than one target..

Shooting’s New Dress Code

Clothing has become a contentious issue in shooting.

Because thick apparel might offer some additional support or absorb more recoil than thinner material, the authorities have introduced stringent and unbelievably detailed rules on the thickness and stiffness of competitors’ clothing – and that includes undergarments..All shooters face the possibility of clothes testing at the 2012 Games..

Shooting Goes to the Olympics

Shooting appeared at the inaugural modern Games in

1896 with five events, and it proved to be enormously popular: the 200m army rifle attracted one hundred and sixty contestants, under the personal supervision of the Greek Crown Prince Nicholas.. The pistol shooting was dominated by two brothers from Harvard,

A Youthful OSCAR SWAHN (BEARDED) At STOCKHOLM 1912, EIGHT YEARS BEFORE BECOMING THE OLDEST EVER OLYMPIC medallist

John and Sumner Paine, whose weapons were far superior to those of their opponents.. John won the Military Pistol and Sumner took the silver, while John fraternally withdrew from the free pistol competition leaving the field clear for Sumner to bag the gold.. It saved his bacon.. In 1901 Sumner was charged with assault after firing four shots at his daughter’s music teacher who he had found at home with his wife in a compromising position..The case was dropped when it was argued that his marksmanship would have allowed him to hit the music teacher with ease had be really wanted to..

Live pigeon shooting came and went with the Paris Olympics

of 1900: nearly three hundred pigeons were killed in the course of the event, leaving blood and feathers all over the participants, officials and spectators..Thankfully, such slaughter is no longer a feature of the Olympics. . Rather more regretfully, the duelling pistol competition – in which the targets were mannequins dressed in frock coats, with bullseyes on the throat – made its last appearance in 1912..

Shooting was absent from the 1904 Games,having been displaced by archery, but it returned at London 1908 with a vengeance: more than two hundred competitors took part in fifteen events,

with trap shooting included for the first time. .The sport has been a feature of every Games bar 1928, when the IOC decided to get strict about its amateurism rules – most leading shooters of the time were winning prize money in tournaments..

Because shooting requires mental and physical composure rather than athleticism, its list of Olympic champions is rather more diverse than that of other sports. .At Antwerp 1920 the Swede Oscar Swahn, a gold medallist at the two previous Olympics, won a team silver in the running deer contest and at the age of 72 became the Olympics’ oldest medallist.. (The deer, by the way, were moving targets made of cardboard; the event has, alas, been lost from the Olympic programme..) At the other end of the scale, at Atlanta in 1996 the American Kim Rhode became the youngest shooting medallist when she won the double trap at the age of seventeen..

In 1924 Lt Sidney Hinds helped the USA to the gold in the team rifle with a perfect score that was achieved after he had been wounded by an accidental discharge.. Even more remarkable was the Hungarian Károly Takács. By the mid-1930s he had become a top-class pistol shooter, but he was unable to compete in the 1936 Berlin Games because the event was open only to commissioned officers and he was a mere sergeant..Worse, in 1938 his right hand was maimed in a grenade accident.. Undaunted, he learnt to shoot with his left hand, and went on to take gold in the rapid fire pistol competition in both 1948 and 1952.. French world champion Franck Dumoulin showed similar pluck: he broke his arm in a motorcycle accident in 1999 but came back to win a gold in the 10m air pistol in 2000..

2004 provided Olympic shooting’s first love match.. Katerina Kurkova, who won a bronze in the 10m air rifle, became romantically linked to American shooter Matthew Emmons.. Emmons provided the Games’ big hard-luck story.. Leading in the men’s 50m rifle, triple position, he hit the bullseye with his last shot but had fired across the shooting lanes into an opponent’s target; he scored zero for that shot, and so lost out on a medal..The pair married in 2007 and both returned to the Beijing Games in 2008.. Kurkova (now Emmons) won the first gold medal of the Games.. Matthew

‘I DID WHAt?’ – MATTHEW EMMONS LEARNS HE’S SHOT THE WRong Target At Athens 2004

once again lost a winning position on the last shot and finished with silver..

The silver and bronze medallists in the women’s air pistol in Beijing were Russia’s Natalia Poderina and Georgia’s Nino Salukvadze, who embraced on the podium and called for their warring nations to desist..At the same Games, 61-year-old Latvian shooter Afanasijs Kuzmins became the first athlete to appear in eight Games, while Abhinav Bindra won India’s first ever individual gold medal in the 10m air rifle; the nation rewarded him with heaps of cash and a lifetime pass on Indian railways.. In a final narrative twist, North Korean shooter Kim Jong-Su, who had won silver in the men’s 50m pistol and a bronze in the 10m air pistol, was stripped of his medals after testing positive for the beta-blocker propranolol..