When you say "olympic shooting", do you mean in rifle, pistol or shotgun? Fermoy Rifle Club is your nearest rifle range, I'm not sure where your nearest pistol or shotgun ranges would be. Your first step would be to locate your nearest club and call in, look around, ask if they do ISSF shooting and if they're affiliated to the NTSA (for rifle or pistol) or the ICPSA (for shotgun), and join up if the answer is yes. They'll have club kit to get you started, and will show you the basics of how to shoot safely. That will get you up and going. (If you have no idea if you'd prefer rifle or pistol or shotgun, try all of them and see).

As to reaching the olympics - well, be prepared to spend a lot of focussed time on and off the range, both in training and in analysing your training. Be prepared to spend a fair amount of money on coaching, equipment, ammunition, travel, memberships and insurance and such. Join a gym and start working on cardiovascular fitness. Be prepared to spend a lot of time pointing your firearm at a wall and dry-firing in rifle or pistol. Be prepared to travel all over Ireland for domestic matches and all over the world for ISSF international matches. And be prepared to take on all that work yourself because there's little support available in Ireland for most olympic sports

However, it's not a binary choice - if the full dedication you need to get to the Games is too much, that does not rule you out from training and competing and enjoying the sport well into your retirement.

IRLConor wrote: »

Nothing like a bit of ambition.

Actually, I'd met a Jamacian who got to World Cup level in one year on air pistol from scratch. So it's not hugely far-fetched, it's actually been done.
You would have to be willing to sacrifice everything else though. No job, no career, no social life, nothing. Just shooting.

It was tremendously impressive, thought rereading my notes from the training camp, he wasn't from Jamacia, but Trinidad Lovely chap, seriously fun to hang out with despite being under enormous pressure to do well abroad - their shooting NGB had taken himself and another equally impressive smallbore rifle shooter and was sending them all over the world to world cups and other matches and training camps in a gamble to try to get a quota place - they believed it was the only way they could convince their local government to fund the sport properly, by being able to point to a star in the sport. Sadly, I didn't see his name on the lists for Beijing, but another countryman of his made it there and placed 36th with a respectable 571. Rodney himself was shooting around 560-570 last november IIRC.