Bit of a disaster for me, but otherwise this went fairly well. Artic conditions, mind you, lots of wooly hats on the line. Noone made the qualification scores though - two shooters came within three or four points (one in men's air rifle and one in men's air pistol), but they didn't quite make it. One more chance left, on Jan3...

There's always been a reluctance to specify a this-way-and-no-other-way format because how people train varies so widely; personally, I'd just send everything in. The aim wasn't just to get paper in the door, by the way. I've written up what we were thinking when we codified the procedure, as frankly and bluntly as I could, more than once, eg:

The philosophy behind the process is not so much simple as fundamental. We want to:
* be fair
* send the best shooters to represent their country
* and not to fall on our collective asses when we do go abroad to represent Ireland.

So folks should know exactly why things are done the way they're done. Some bits will prove not to work so well and will get tweaked - the original idea of having just one single qualifying match was always contentious, and there's merit in having a range of dates available; there's also merit in the idea of just having one shot at qualifying (even if you have a range of dates on which you can qualify, ie. there are several qualifying matches and you're allowed shoot in all of them, but only one prenominated match would count, that kind of thing). Thing is, there have been issues before even during air matches where the range is more forgiving on one day than on another (temperature, for example - I had at least one shot go off on Sunday before I was ready because I couldn't feel my fingertip well enough).

I'd argue the point more, but I think it's a better idea to try something and see if it works; and as long as it's at least even-handed and tries to be fair, then the most successful approach should work.

The one thing I wouldn't comprimise on is how we actually select - it must remain an impersonal thing, as far out of any person's hands as possible. For Intershoot 2010, for example, the qualifying score for men's air rifle is 573, because on average, that was what you needed to get into the top 66% of the field in Intershoot 2009, 2008 and 2007 (you check to see what score got you into the top two-thirds of the field in each year, rounding up a point if there was a tie split across the two-thirds place -- ie. if place 61, 60 and 59 all tied on 570, you'd use 571 -- and you average all three scores). Since that's an impersonal decision, not made by any individual or committee, the system that's based on it is going to be fair to everyone (though not necessarily easy, but then the international circuit really is that hard).