50m Men's Prone Rifle dropped from the Olympics?

Sparks

.@ISSF_Shooting proposes to remove Men’s 50m Prone Rifle from the Olympic programme, adding a third 10m Air Rifle event in its place... twitter.com/MacCoach10/sta…

https://twitter.com/EdinkillieSport/status/801846664155774977


Seems to be in a good cause, but it's going to be a bit controversial for many.

ISSF wrote:

24.11.2016
Tokyo 2020: ISSF Ad-Hoc Committee releases Shooting program recommendations
The ISSF Ad Hoc Committee released its recommendations to establish gender equality in the Olympic Program.
The ISSF Ad-Hoc Committee, meeting in Munich, Germany, released today its recommendations to establish gender equality in the Olympic Program. These recommendations are in response to the requirements of the International Olympic Committee’s Agenda 2020. The IOC is now working with International Federations “to achieve 50 per cent female participation in the Olympic Games and to stimulate women’s participation and involvement in sport by creating more participation opportunities at the Olympic Games” by Tokyo 2020. The IOC is also encouraging “the inclusion of mixed-gender team events,”– consisting in one male and one female athlete competing for the same nation.

Shooting currently has nine men´s events and six women’s events on the Olympic program so major change is necessary. In order to respond to these challenges, ISSF President Olegario Vazquez Raña – with ISSF Executive Committee and ISSF Administrative Council approval – appointed a special “Ad-hoc” Committee composed of ISSF leaders to prepare recommendations to achieve gender equality in Shooting. Secretary General Franz Schreiber chairs the Committee, which includes ISSF Vice-Presidents Gary Anderson, Wang Yifu and Vladimir Lisin, as well as representatives of athletes and coaches, and other discipline experts.


The ISSF decision process started in 2015. Since then the Ad-Hoc Committee has met three times and conducted a detailed analysis of the actual events. The process has involved all ISSF Section Committees (Athletes, Coaches, Shotgun, Rifle, Pistol and Technical) in their evaluation of several different alternatives and proposals.


The first decision of the Ad-Hoc Committee was to preserve discipline parity and retain 15 Olympic shooting events – 5 Rifle, 5 Pistol, 5 Shotgun. Each of the three disciplines currently has three men’s events and two women’s events in the Olympic program. The Committee decided that the best way to achieve gender equality was to convert one men’s event in each discipline to a mixed gender team event. Many different proposals were introduced for the events to be changed, considering factors such as universality, sport presentation, grass-roots development and sustainability. Many mixed gender team events proposals were also evaluated, with specific consideration given to their potential to support the worldwide development of Shooting.


After concluding an exhaustive evaluation process, the ISSF Ad-Hoc Committee recommends replacing the Double Trap Men event with a Trap Mixed Gender Team event, the 50m Rifle Prone Men event with a 10m Air Rifle Mixed Gender Team event and the 50m Pistol Men event with a 10m Air Pistol Mixed Gender Team event. The path to this recommendation involved many difficult, emotional and courageous decisions by coaches, athletes, members of all Section Committees, ISSF leaders and many persons in the shooting community, who tried to act in the best interests of future generations in our sport while emphasizing the priority of keeping Shooting in the Olympic Games.


The ISSF is releasing the Ad-Hoc Committee recommendations so athletes, coaches, national federations and fans can be informed and offer their contributions to the discussion. These recommendations will again be studied by the Ad-Hoc Committee together with the IOC’s Rio 2016 event-based evaluation that will be released in January. The IOC analysis will consider a wide range of media and participation data. These recommendations will then be presented to the ISSF Executive Committee and Administrative Council. The Council will make a final decision on the recommendations that the ISSF must submit to the IOC by the end of February 2017. The IOC will make a final decision on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Program in mid-2017.


Until we have a final decision by the IOC on the 2020 Olympic Program, the ISSF intends to keep all current events in the 2017 ISSF World Cup Series program, and to also conduct the proposed Mixed Gender Team events starting with the first 2017 ISSF World Cup Stage, in New Delhi, India. The events being replaced will continue to be conducted in all ISSF World Championships.

ISSF Ad Hoc Committee

Cass

I can see the need to try and increase female participation, but i'm curious. Why remove the event altogether and replace it with a 10m Air event? Why not simply turn the current event into a mixed event? Is 10m air events more attractive to women? Is it more competitive or a better wya to put it, does it level the playing field between men and women over the current events?

Also shooting has always been a male dominated sport. As such does it not stand to reason there would be more events for men than women? If they try to push changes are they going to end up with a decrease in standards simply to "make quota"?

Of course i have no idea about how they came to their decision, but what is to stop them either turning one event into a women only one, or simply adding new events?

Sparks

I have no idea why they've done it this way. They had several other options - they could, for example, have reverted the 1972 decision to split the events by gender in the first place. 50m Prone instead of 50m Men's Prone and 50m Women's Prone (which is still an event in the World Championships). That would have given space to bring more disciplines back into the games, like the centerfire events (yes, the ranges are more expensive, but if they're willing to make everyone buy new kit every few years with stupid rule changes, then money and inconvenience obviously isn't a factor) or running target.

Instead, this is probably going to tick lots of people off and it'll be a wallop to the events involved.

Cass

They are taking one event, scrapping it, and replacing it with another event and classifying it as mixed. The obvious question is what if the "mixture" is not 50/50?

Say there are 10 per detail. What if there are 7 men and 3 women? Will they exclude two men based on scoring, or simply based on gender? Obviously it doesn't work per detail, but keeping with the example if the ratio of men to women competing is higher will they allow it to continue? If so what is the point is mixed events if it essentially a one gender sport?

Also, and forgive my ignorance, i assume the scoring for all events is the same for men and women? If not then will the scoring standard or qualification scores be lowered for women only or across the board?

Sorry for all the questions, and i know only got this so probably don't know much more at the moment than me, but this seems to be a forced solution to resolve a problem that does not exist. The easier solution, to me, would be to create new, separate events for women to level the balance scales. Bring it to 6 events each.

Sparks

No, the replacement event in each case will be a team event whose teams will comprise one male and one female athlete. So for those events they'll get gender parity by definition. If you took the existing events and removed the gender segregation, you might not get gender parity; women tend to shoot better in standing events, men seem to shoot better prone. Or at least that's the long-running theory; it'd be nice to see it actually put to the test in the Games the way it is in national events, given the higher level of training involved.

And we're told it's utterly impossible to add events to the roster. Mind you, we were also told all the other rule changes would improve the television takeup of the sport, and that's been pretty much shown to be bogus, while the youtube success has been almost ignored (but youtube doesn't bring in as much money I suppose).

Cass

Yup, just read back and seen that:

The Committee decided that the best way to achieve gender equality was to convert one men’s event in each discipline to a mixed gender team event.

I don't know. Seems controversial. You reckon it'll ruffle some feathers and outright piss off others?

Sparks

Probably. I'd like to see the events; but we keep dropping events from the roster. Running target, all the centerfire stuff, various shotgun events - it's not a good direction to be going in.

Cass

Don't get me wrong i enjoy watching shooting, but only to a certain point. Even stuff i shoot myself.

Not sure i'm saying this right, but at some point it can turn into watching paint dry. Take away enough events that it becomes a speciality sport that few will watch, and less take part in.

Here is a question for ya. Is there a difference between the men's and women's events? Say 50mtr prone. Are they scored the same, do you qualify with the same standard/score, etc? The reason i ask is sports like F-Class are gender blind. Women can compete with men, and frankly it's shown they can not only hold their own, but have a higher standard of shooting. It's a pity more are not involved, but hopefully that can change (thinking Irish perspective). Point is once you have the gun and gear there is no reason women cannot compete on the same footing as men. There is no need for two categories.

Can the same thing be done here. Women shoot with men in the same 50mtr event? IOW is there a need for the the current segregated events or is it a throw back from the olden days?

IRLConor

Sparks wrote: »

I have no idea why they've done it this way. They had several other options - they could, for example, have reverted the 1972 decision to split the events by gender in the first place. 50m Prone instead of 50m Men's Prone and 50m Women's Prone (which is still an event in the World Championships).

There are two reasons I've heard for not doing this (though I can't find a proper citation for either). The first is that the IOC doesn't like gender mixed individual events for some reason, the other is that the fine print of Agenda 2020 says there needs to be an equal number of medals won by men and women. Equal entries isn't enough.

IMHO, the path of least resistance in the rifle side of things was mixed prone pairs rather than mixed airgun pairs. I think running fewer 50m events is a strategic blunder on ISSF's part since it leaves the 50m ranges underused. They're expensive to build so there will be a lot of pressure to drop those events altogether.

Sparks wrote: »

That would have given space to bring more disciplines back into the games, like the centerfire events (yes, the ranges are more expensive, but if they're willing to make everyone buy new kit every few years with stupid rule changes, then money and inconvenience obviously isn't a factor) or running target.

There will never be an increase in disciplines in the OG. The ISSF gets a fixed number of beds in the village and splitting those among 15 events is hard enough as it is, even with most athletes multi-eventing. Several of the shotgun events are spread pretty thin already.

Cass wrote: »

Here is a question for ya. Is there a difference between the men's and women's events? Say 50mtr prone. Are they scored the same, do you qualify with the same standard/score, etc?

There's no difference between the men's and women's 50m prone event but there are differences between the air rifle and three position events. They're shot to the same standard but women take fewer shots (40 rather than 60 in air rifle and 3x20 instead of 3x40 in 3P).

Cass wrote: »

Can the same thing be done here. Women shoot with men in the same 50mtr event? IOW is there a need for the the current segregated events or is it a throw back from the olden days?

Here (and in many other places) we never segregated the 50m prone rifle event. Even in air rifle, many women in Ireland shoot the full 60 shot course and if there are separate women's prizes they just use the first 40 shots for the score for those.

Segregation isn't a throwback to the olden days. If we had a throwback to the olden days we would have gender blind events. The most famous example of this was the 3P match in the 1976 games:

Gold: Lanny Bassham 1162
Silver: Margaret Murdock 1162
Bronze: Werner Seibold 1160

Cass

IRLConor wrote: »

There's no difference between the men's and women's 50m prone event but there are differences between the air rifle and three position events. They're shot to the same standard but women take fewer shots (40 rather than 60 in air rifle and 3x20 instead of 3x40 in 3P).

Why?

Segregation isn't a throwback to the olden days. If we had a throwback to the olden days we would have gender blind events.

What i'm trying to say, poorly, is why the need to force this gender equality? If it's a new thing, what is the root cause?

Sparks

Cass wrote: »

Why?

I've asked that a few times in the last few decades and nobody claims to know. The decision was made in '72, just after that 3x40 match that Conor listed the scores to (Lanny won on countback in that match and was apparently so disgusted at the placing that he pulled Margaret up onto the top platform on the podium at the medal ceremony). I have a theory or two but they're not terribly flattering of the people who made the decision.

What i'm trying to say, poorly, is why the need to force this gender equality? If it's a new thing, what is the root cause?

It'll have filtered down from the OCI, and they hold the pursestrings for the games and ultimately get to decide who's in and who's not. So the ISSF will jump when told by the OCI. It just ticks me off that they never seem to put some consideration for the club level shooters into those decisions. They've already horribly mangled the spirit of the sport with this ridiculous duelling system and in the process proved that doing so had no impact at all on the TV viewing numbers; and right as they did it, the London games demonstrated that what they needed to make the events more spectator friendly was an announcer who actually had half a clue what was going on and was good at working a crowd.

IRLConor

Sparks wrote: »

The decision was made in '72, just after that 3x40 match that Conor listed the scores to.

It happened a decade after Munich 1972! Those scores were from Montreal 1976 and it wasn't until LA 1984 that the sport was segregated. Moscow in 1980 was still mixed.

Sparks wrote: »

It'll have filtered down from the OCI, and they hold the pursestrings for the games and ultimately get to decide who's in and who's not. So the ISSF will jump when told by the OCI.

IOC, not OCI. Big difference there.

Sparks wrote: »

It just ticks me off that they never seem to put some consideration for the club level shooters into those decisions.

They don't even consider the non-Olympic internationals really. They're furiously trying to hold on to the Olympic slot and are willing to do pretty much anything to hold onto it.

TBH, I've no argument with them changing Men's 50m Prone Rifle into something else in order to balance the numbers. I'm just annoyed that they're picking air rifle pairs. Dropping men's prone and 50m pistol means that it's only the two 3P events left on the 50m range and that means that those are not going to last long on their own in the Olympics. They should be keeping as many 50m disciplines as possible in order to justify building a 50m range.

Cass

Not going too well.

Sparks

IRLConor wrote: »

It happened a decade after Munich 1972! Those scores were from Montreal 1976 and it wasn't until LA 1984 that the sport was segregated. Moscow in 1980 was still mixed.

Huh. I could have sworn I read Lanny saying that they changed the event in '72. Oh well. I still disagree with that decision, mind
I mean, we have this explanation that's been passed down for years about how women shoot better standing because hips and men shoot prone better because bellys-vs-mammaries. And I accepted those explanations for ages because it didn't seem like we could change things and why waste the energy on something that didn't seem relevant, but if it's all change now, well, why not have men and women compete shoulder to shoulder and see if those explanations had anything at all behind them or were just bogus claptrap from the 1950s?
I mean, I've had my ass kicked on the line by enough 12-year-old girls to have gained some doubts on the theory over the years
So if the stated purpose of the change is to ensure gender equality, why not actually push for gender equality and let the genders compete side by side? The way they do all the way up to the nationals in most countries?

Beats the crap out of pulling disciplines from the program. And it'd let them reintroduce other disciplines in to improve the diversity there.

IOC, not OCI. Big difference there.

Need dialing wand. Will mash keyboard with hand.

They don't even consider the non-Olympic internationals really. They're furiously trying to hold on to the Olympic slot and are willing to do pretty much anything to hold onto it.

I can grok their need there, I just think they're doing it wrong and -- if this saves it, which is not certain at all -- will end up saving something that isn't the sport we all started off in. And after seeing what the UIPM did to modern pentathlon to "save" it, I don't want to see that in what I think of as "my" sport.

Plus, I think you're right and this is a massive threat to 50m shooting at this level. I might prefer 10m, but you start losing ranges and that doesn't do anyone any good at all. First we lost the 300m and fullbore stuff, then we lost running target, and now 50m? Then the only cartridge sport left is 25m pistol, and that's hard to justify on its own because it can't be shot in several countries like London, which just hosted the games with a lot of negative press on that point, and now Tokyo where holding a cartridge pistol is pretty much impossible - I mean, I occasionally hear of some convoluted path to owning one specifically for ISSF shooting, but the story is always light on details.

ezra_

I was reading on Cian O'Connor's facebook that they downgraded equestrian to a Cat IV sport, which I think means that it gets less time and effort in the Olympics.

I'm assuming shooting was always in this space? End of the day - the IOC want the sports that bring the audience (and sponsorship), shooting will never be one of those.

tac foley

Cass wrote: »

Not going too well.

i tried to sign but was expected to tell my Facetwitch friends. As you know, I don't have any friends, Facetwitch or otherwise.

But I earnestly support ALL forms of shooting sports - so far I've attended my club ranges 68 times this year.

tac

tac foley

Sparks wrote: »

Then the only cartridge sport left is 25m pistol, and that's hard to justify on its own because it can't be shot in several countries like London,

No wonder I didn't see you there. It didn't happen.

Ah, hold on, what was this then?

Shooting competitions at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London took place from 28 July to 6 August at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. Fifteen events were included with 390 athletes taking part. The events were the same as in 2008.

The competitions were originally planned for the National Shooting Centre in Bisley, Surrey, and the temporary solution at the Royal Artillery Barracks (which is in the River Zone) was adopted later after the International Olympic Committee expressed concerns about the distance between London and Bisley.

Since the pistols used in the 25m and 50m shooting events were deemed by HM Government as prohibited in England, Scotland and Wales after the Dunblane Massacre, special dispensation had to be granted by the UK Government and security criteria met by LOCOG to allow certain events to go ahead.

Pistol
Men's 10 m air pistol Q F
Men's 25 m rapid fire pistol Q F
Men's 50 m pistol Q F
Women's 10 m air pistol Q F
Women's 25 m pistol Q F

tac

IRLConor

tac foley wrote: »

No wonder I didn't see you there. It didn't happen.

What was this then?

Pistol
Men's 10 m air pistol Q F
Men's 25 m rapid fire pistol Q F
Men's 50 m pistol Q F
Women's 10 m air pistol Q F
Women's 25 m pistol Q F

tac

I think he meant that it required a lot of hoop jumping that the IOC and LOCOG would have preferred not to do. If they had been given a few more reasons to pressure ISSF into "quietly" dropping the 25m events they would have been very happy.

Thankfully the ISSF didn't roll over that time, but who's to say what they'll do in the future?

Grizzly 45

Proposal to drop 50 meter pistol from the Olympics..

You all know the drill...Sign and pass it on.

https://www.change.org/p/international-sports-shooting-federation-save-50m-pistol-shooting-at-the-olympics

gunny123

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Proposal to drop 50 meter pistol from the Olympics..

You all know the drill...Sign and pass it on.

https://www.change.org/p/international-sports-shooting-federation-save-50m-pistol-shooting-at-the-olympics

gawd, is there no end to this ?

tac foley

I tried again, and made it happen.

If you didn't sign, there's no use whinging if it all goes tits up, right?

tac

Sparks

tac foley wrote: »

No wonder I didn't see you there. It didn't happen.
Ah, hold on, what was this then?

It was a specially exempted event, for which the British athletes competing in the cartridge pistol events had been training in Switzerland.

As you know.
And as you know I know.
Knock that kind of nonsense on the head please tac, it's not big, it's not clever and it's doing nothing but dragging things down.

Steve012

gunny123 wrote: »

gawd, is there no end to this ?

Sign everything
! an sign it twice!

Be the help o god there will be no spilt milk..

gunny123

The coverage of the shooting sports at the olympics on television is pathetic, i did often wonder if the organisers only have these sports under sufference, rather than because they want them.

Cass

Seen a report. While i don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs it seems they are going ahead with this proposal. 5 Rifle, 5 Pistol, 5 Shotgun. Removal of prone rifle, free pistol, and double trap.

Half-cocked

Cass wrote: »

Seen a report. While i don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs it seems they are going ahead with this proposal. 5 Rifle, 5 Pistol, 5 Shotgun. Removal of prone rifle, free pistol, and double trap.

Does this impact on Irish shooters? Double Trap isn't shot in this country, what about the other 2 dropped disciplines?

Sparks

50m Prone Rifle is just a wee bit popular in this country.
50m pistol less so, but the problem is that now you have very little case for keeping 50m events in the Games when the IOC makes its next set of demands after the next games to cut costs and reduce building requirements.

Fastnet50

50 metre prone is only a shadow of its former self in this country. Used to be one of the main target sports back in the 70s and 80s but all the other disciplines--gallery---benchrest---pistol--3P etc have left it almost for dead. Also much as I love participating in target shooting it can be very boring to watch. At a match in Germany and they had cameras on the targets back to a screen in the clubhouse and even the shooters were not that interested. If prone rifle had a large,interested viewing audience I doubt it would be dropped from the Olympics.

Sparks

I don't think that's really true. 50m prone is a lot better than it was in the 70s and 80s, in terms of performance at least.
In terms of participation, other disciplines have more people, but that doesn't mean 50m is dead -- foot and mouth had more of an impact than the other disciplines becoming available. Golf isn't dead just because you see more people using a driving range than playing 18 holes; it just has more people. And in this case, nobody could do anything else during the 70s and 80s because of the de facto ban on the required kit. (There's also the minor point that we're talking about the subset of shooting disciplines that are in the olympics, which isn't even all the ISSF shooting disciplines we do in this country).

Also, shooting doesn't really have a large body of spectators for a lot of reasons, and frankly, that applies to all kinds of shooting to one extent or another. It's a sport you do. It's not like soccer, where 99.99% of the people soccer claims as being in the sport are actually sitting on a couch with a six-pack and a pack of cheetos and yelling at a TV screen about how the people doing it are doing it all wrong

Fastnet50

I never said anything different in my post than you have just said. I see all the prone ranges still there but nobody using them in most of the clubs I visit. I never said it was dead just that the other disciplines had overtaken it. Still has its dedicated followers as I seen the NASRPC nationals in harbour house last summer.

IRLConor

Half-cocked wrote: »

Does this impact on Irish shooters? Double Trap isn't shot in this country, what about the other 2 dropped disciplines?

There's only one person shooting 50m pistol that I'm aware of. Since he's on his own, there are no matches. He competes with his 10m air pistol at home and has shot at least one 50m pistol match abroad.

As for 50m prone rifle, there are 25-30 people shooting it here of whom maybe 6 or 7 have made international teams in the last few years. That's covering both men's prone and women's prone (which is still shot in European and World Championships). In terms of participation, a typical match would be about 15 people. The last one in Rathdrum was fully booked at 21 people. There were 11 matches last year, so it's just short of one match a month on average.