Sweidish Sport letter on gender proposals! excellent read

[sparky]

with my free and air pistols I already have everything to win the Olympics, theoretically that is, for rapid fire I'd need to sink a fortune.

And yes, with my rapid fire pistols I would have to sink a fortune to win free or air.
I don't have any idea what you're trying to say.

It seems to me to be unreasonable for any national body to be selling one group of participants down the river in favour of another.

The reply from the IOC to Pistol Australia states "The IOC is serious when it states that it wants to achieve gender equality in all sports by Tokyo 2020."

What does this mean?

Looking here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... _in_sports
"Women are excluded from the 25m rapid fire pistol, the 50m pistol and the 50m rifle prone events.[20] Men are excluded from the 25m pistol event.[20] From 1996 to 2004, women were allowed to participate the double trap competition. The women's event was taken off the Olympic program after the 2004 Summer Olympics.[21] Final shooting for women was discontinued in international competition as a result."

It seems they want women to compete in the same matches on an equal footing, not invent some strange mixed pairs competition which no other sport has except ice-skating.
So fine, let women compete in RFP and 50m, let men compete in sport pistol. Problem solved. What the ISSF is trying to do makes no sense.

IOC wants equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

[jhmartin]

IOC wants equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

You are correct, but then why stir the pot and have mixed team events?
Well, I guess the equality of outcome would still apply if there are the same number of men and women on a team.

[SlartyBartFast]

IOC wants equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity.

Easy for men, who dominate all the available sports, to complain about outcome vs. opportunity.

When the ISSF doesn't let women compete in many disciplines, competitive shooter don't really have a leg to stand on trying to complain that giving women their fair space at the top is unfair to the men.

Remember, everyone has been silent all these years while women and men were segregated and international competition excluded women from 50m pistol and RF pistol. And all the years that women have no had a 50m prone event.

[jhmartin]

Remember, everyone has been silent all these years

Whoa ... absolutely not true. I have complained MANY TIMES to Gary Anderson, specifically on no prone event for women, and his response has been that IOC won't allow any more events. Our ISSF reps have let the women down .... not "everyone".

Also, to the question of why women don't shoot 3x40 or 60 shot Air .... the response was that IOC nations would not allow it.

My feeling walking away to both of those was "That's BS" ... if they wanted it, they would have done it ... the fight was deemed too hard I think, and they (ISSF) don't want to be too non-PC.

[SlartyBartFast]

[quote="jhmartin"Whoa ... absolutely not true. I have complained MANY TIMES to Gary Anderson, specifically on no prone event for women, and his response has been that IOC won't allow any more events.[/quote]

Glad you complained. Were there petitions and national associations complaining to the IOC? Not surprised at the response you got. Adding more Olympic events has been a non-starter for a long time.

But where are the petitions to create women's events in 50m pistol and 25m rapid fire in the ISSF rules and at ISSF events?

I'm not sure how being for equal representation and equalising the events between men and women would be "non-PC". But your comment also mixes IOC and ISSF. As the regulatory body, the ISSF can be making their events gender equal regardless of the events in the Olympics. It's not just the Olympic events that exclude women.

[jhmartin]

As the regulatory body, the ISSF can be making their events gender equal regardless of the events in the Olympics. It's not just the Olympic events that exclude women.

As far as I can tell, the ISSF does nothing by themselves except for a few that keep making rule changes for all when all they would need to do is stomp on a few juries to enforce existing rules.
Don't see a lot of leadership there (excepting for a few athletes who are ignored) ... a lot of followers though. Kind of a "Grand Poobah" club.

[JamesH]

The ISSF could have gone ahead and made all matches equal participation, and let the IOC adopt what they want.
Except they did nothing.

[JamesH]

It seems they want women to compete in the same matches on an equal footing, not invent some strange mixed pairs competition which no other sport has except ice-skating.

Badminton? Tennis?

People watch the mens singles, maybe the ladies singles if there's time, mixed doubles is a time filler after everyone has gone home - nothing more.

This stupid mixed doubles AP match is a leap into oblivion.

[jenrick]

The "simplest" answer I would suggest as follows:

Step 1: The ISSF creates a men's and women's class for every event. So you'd have 50m women's Free pistol and 25 m men's sport pistol, etc. This will create a nucleus of women and men who can in the next decade or so shoot at the penultimate level. It will also allow for an actual comparison of scores of the two genders, I imagine after the learning curve is handled, there will be little difference in the top shooters overall regardless of gender.

Step 2: The Olympics simply rotates pairs of shooting sports through the program (say free pistol, you have a men's and women's). You could have 7 distinct events, each with a men's and women's division. If we wanted to still have the 15th event, find an event that already has both gender divisions, and run it as a mixed gender sport.

Step 3: Do this for the next 2 or 3 Olympics until their is either a demonstrated disparity in scores, in which case having separate divisions makes sense; or there is parity in scores so you can now make them mixed gender events. If the ISSF wants to integrate events from there on, fine, if they want to keep separate divisions and only in the Olympics do they meet, that's fine too.

The reality of the situation is that adding a Women's 50m pistol to the ISSF competitions for instance wouldn't really create any more work for the organizers. They can shoot at the same time as the mens division for that matter, it's just an extra few sets of medals to order. Think how major marathons are run in the US, it's all mixed gender, with just a ton of different classes. In a related note, at the grass roots level it's flat out silly to have two separate courses of fire for men and women in a sport that is 99.9% technique and mental control. It's much easier to have everyone shoot the same course of fire with the same gear and scored all together. If we need to break that up between men and women for some weird reason, then whatever, but honestly who here at a club match cares if all the scores are tabulated together?

-Jenrick

[JamesH]

I agree. I think I heard that the fencers rotate foil, epee and sabre through the Olympics to cut the number of matches, no need to ditch any of them.
Looking at 2016 the men did individual foil, epee and sabre, team epee and foil
The women did individual foil, epee and sabre, team epee and sabre

It seems a little on and off actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_a ... r_Olympics

There's no reason men and women couldn't shoot at the same time and on the same firing line side by side for mens and womens medals, plus a pairs medal if they want it (although the final would have to be separate.....).
That would be a real 'mixed' event.

But really, I still don't understand where the IOC are going with this if they are promoting mixed or pairs matches, are they going to have a mixed 100m running relay? Mixed swimming relay? Men and women run the 100m in pairs and their times are added?
It seems confused and the ISSF is adding to the confusion.

There's still no need to permanently ditch any one match, rotating them through year by year would be an ideal option.

[David Levene]

It's all an academic discussion now.

The decision's been made and will be presented to the IOC in the next few days.

[JamesH]

There's always next time, no reason to give up right now.

[David Levene]

There's always next time, no reason to give up right now.

I would expect the next time to bring new battles I'm afraid.

[jhmartin]

A slow ratchet to zero.

[JamesH]

There's always next time, no reason to give up right now.

I would expect the next time to bring new battles I'm afraid.

Of course, and what are we going to do about it?

For a start I'd like to know the basis of this 'ad hoc' committee and how it came to be making decisions for us with no external input.

[jhmartin]

There's always next time, no reason to give up right now.

I would expect the next time to bring new battles I'm afraid.

Of course, and what are we going to do about it?

For a start I'd like to know the basis of this 'ad hoc' committee and how it came to be making decisions for us with no external input.

It's funny, I've asked my ISSF reps from the US who were the "Ad-hoc" committee .... never an answer.

I'm starting to believe it is a very small number. The problem is once it ("the committee") even proposed the changes to the IOC, there was no more to argue ... it was done.

We have a pretty robust prone program here in the USA that is not made up of just Olympic hopefuls, but spans the range from as young as 7-8 years up thru old geezers (80+) who you wonder how they are going to get up after a stage.... I know that will continue here in the USA ... NRA, CMP .... dunno about USAS.

As I've said before, this is the beginning of the end of the smallbore events in the Olympics ... Tokyo just may be the last ... then we're on our way to laser tag.