TargetTalk

j-team wrote:

Nigel wrote:New Zealand hosts the Oceania regional championships, usually alternating with Australia.

Not any more! Since our only suitable range was closed, the Oceania champs have become lodged in Aus! Much to their dissaproval I might add. Due to the previously mentioned outrageously high cost of running an ISSF approved event they will loose a lot of money running it.

Bummer. Sorry to hear that. I had a great time shooting on that range. They did have some kind of spec-ops training exercise going on down the back, is that why it was shut? Taken over by the Gov?

This is what I could find:

http://www.pistolnz.org.nz/pdf/download ... pagm08.pdf

Nigel wrote:What kind of support do resident athletes at Colorado Springs get? I understand they have to volunteer a certain amount of time, do they get anything in return beyond board and meals?

Nigel,

Things have changed over the years.

It used to be if the national coach wanted you there, you were in. You were funded (travel expenses and per diem) for selection matches and world cups. Ammunition was provided. You could have a key to the range and shoot as much as you wanted. That was 25 years ago.

Then around 1995 or so, athlete development was integrated into the resident athlete program and included some of an athlete's time going toward education, volunteer activities, work and/or other things; not to exceed a certain number of hours per week. The focus was to be on your sport. Funding to matches and such wasn't necessarily a given anymore although still relatively generous. Ammunition was still provided.

I'm sure it's different today. If you're interested and qualified, or know someone who is, your best bet is to contact the national coach for the discipline in which you compete.

Best of luck,
Retired

Guest wrote:Link to article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 81950.html

Thanks. A good writer, this Allen St. John, slick and smooth and appealing; and a VERY mediocre journalist. So myopically "americanish" and unable to look further then barely beyond his country's next Northern border, in an article that would have to derive all its strength and all its argument from judicious comparison. Sigh.

Alexander

gerhard wrote:I'm French shooter living near Paris, shooting Rifle 10m 50m and 300m and the crossbow 10m match.

Because you live near Versailles. Apart from that and from Mailly, there exist hardly any 300 metres ISSF ranges in France, and the many 200 metres military ranges are more and more being closed down and become inaccessible to any kind of use for future.

Same problem in Germany with its many many nice military 300 metres ranges, most of them simply being pulled down instead of being converted for civilian use.

In Europe the great nation of shooting is Germany, with much 1 million licences, they have a great market.

The French system of youth outreach and club education is actually much _superior_ to the German one; unfortunately, the French do not seem to realize that, so we as neighbours have to tell them ;-).
(LOL, don't hit me, at least not with anything above 7,5 Joules of energy!)

We are around 200.000 shooters in France but only few competitors and many of them are old ( i'm 61).

But FFTir has been very active and inclusive in the last 10 years or so, embracing new disciplines and making the sport more attractive. You have, indeed, an atrociously bad public relations and civil society outreach department, but the federation's work inside the (mental, psychologiocal) "Schnokeloch", and in foreign sportive development cooperation (Cameroon, Algeria) is very good, in my opinion.

We look on our Neigboors the germans, we have copy their competition style of Bundesliga but we have not enough club's shooters to have 5 members includind a women or junior.

No. You don't have the money to pay for the gladiators being flown in to Bundesliga event evenings from all over the world. German top Bundesliga teams buy Indians, Swiss, Serbians, Americans, and pay them very well for every single event.

They have (germans) the medias with them,

Quite on the contrary, alas. :-)

Avec mes meilleures salutations,
Alexandre

Alexander wrote: No. You don't have the money to pay for the gladiators being flown in to Bundesliga event evenings from all over the world. German top Bundesliga teams buy Indians, Swiss, Serbians, Americans, and pay them very well for every single event.

So there is prizemoney for the Bundesliga? Or top foreign shooters get some kind of "appearance fee" in addition to travel expenses, in order to get points for an eventual championship?

http://www.dsb.de/media/PDF/Bundesliga/ ... 9-2010.pdf

I can't figure out if those are fees or prizemoney.

I think Alexander was saying that the top teams pay for the best shooters to shoot for their team. Just like a pro soccer team or football team pays their players.

Please correct me if I am wrong in the way I interpreted the post.

AnthonyT wrote:I think Alexander was saying that the top teams pay for the best shooters to shoot for their team. Just like a pro soccer team or football team pays their players.

Exactly. And don't you think you are done with a few hundreds of Euros per evening and foreign shooter. :-)

Alexander

To alexander (and others)
The money is in any place and the shooting is not different, why be an angel, we have money, less than others pershaps, use it intelligently.
The French Federation have money !

We have some 300m ranges in France, I shoot in Picardy and we have a 20 electronics targets range in Clermont..look at it here : http://amannbg.free.fr/Le_Tir/GPP_2009.html

I you are right about the French system, why the youth category are empty. Look at the FFT site the qualified people for the National French Championships standing in Montluçon : http://www.fftir.asso.fr/index.php?cham ... 0&result=1
These category are the future for the shooting. If our system was the best we must have a lot of Youth alas it's not. And you must know that i 'm not happy of this.

You speak about the active work of the FFT to make the sport more attractive.. with the toys shoot plastics balls.. lol much money go away..
It's not serious, pershaps we are happy and we dont know it, but I see the others country, and the results.

When i write that we dont have enough shooters to make a team, it's not to speak about the foreigners and buy some good shooters, I speak like above We dont have enough competitors in French Clubs.. only this.
The average old of the teams are around 40 Years old.. I one more time I m not happy of this..

We dont seduce the youth, we dont have plan in future alas.
Pershaps the German system is not good and have defaults, OK but our system is not better.

I hope you have understand what I want to say :
- I like the shooting sport
- I am not happy of this fact in France
- We work all together to go up and perfect what we have
- I hope the change come with news ideas
- Hope with news persons.

Have a nice day and good shoot to you.
Friendly

Gerhard

Dear Gerhard,
It also might be a very instructive mutual example of "the grass always seems greener on the other side" (feel free to give an Alsatian version of the idiom) ... ;-)

Apart from that:

- We don't have your "écoles de tir" and we envy you for that. I know that much of it is nice label, but there also is some real content.

- We don't have your grassroots-outreach for "animateurs de club" and "initiateurs de club", and that is the big and central gaping hole in our training and education system: no base ! Only one of the 16 state federations tries to fill it now, mine.

Alexander

Alexander and Gerhard, I'm jealous of both of you. I live in Canada ans shooting gets no support. That said I know some that would be jealous of the region where I live because at least we have a healthy set of competitions.

So Alexander I think you re right "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". I think we all just care about the sport and would love to be able to incorporate the best that we see in the best programs from around the world.

Many people here are jealous of Canada, indeed. It lies on the American continent, and is a civilised country.

;-)

Alexander

Hello Richard and Alexander

I am too old now but if i win sweepstake i go immediatlly in US, it's for me the country of shooting, not only ISSF but some great places names ring in my ear like Colorado Spring Camp Perry (near you Richard) and Fort Benning.

I must explain what i want for France :
I dont want German (grass) or others systems (greener or not) in other side ;-) I want a better system for the France.
To said like Richard : "love to be able to incorporate the best that we see in the best programs from around the world"
I want a system who "produce" youth competition shooter who go along the life in shooting, whe stay in shooting.
I want that FFT works with army, administrations and greats companies to find some trak to assure work and money to our top shooter (we speak one more money, it's unavoidable).
Yes, we have "ecole de tir" and "initiateur de clubs" and it's a good think, but only some are able (really) to teach shooting. It's often not the good person at the good place, the volunter are sincere, but you can only teach what you know, it's the problem. You must not be a champion to teach but you must are able to know the base of what you speak.

An exemple :
Last years in the Winter Indoor French Championship in Chambery, only one shooter is up 590 in the top category S1 (open). It's not a good level.
Hovewer we have very good top shooters in France, we must help us tu progress, look here :
2010 Spring Airgun Championships - DAY 1 RESULTS
2010 Spring Airgun Championships - DAY 2 RESULTS
on http://www.usashooting.org/results.php
We have Champions, they come from " ecoles de tir" i hope they stay at the top, we must help them to stay at this level.
We are all on the same sing : We like the shooting sport, and we want the best for it.
In France
- we have: ranges - active clubs - benevolents (a lot) - an few but enough money
- need of Will from managers .. it's not very difficult.
Pershaps I dream, but hope..
Wait and see
Have good days of shoot everyone, hurry up !

Just the last word, Richard and Alexander when you come in France, try to contact for meeting..
regards

Seems we are all suffering from the same problem - we all live where there are pieces and parts for a good shooting program, but don't have all the parts needed for a strong running shooting program.

One thing that everyone seems to be echoing is the trouble in youth recruitment and then retaining those that are recruited. I believe this is the key to solving a lot of the problems, but is also probably the hardest hurdle to overcome.

Those who would like a bit more of "spectator appeal" will doubtlessly be glad to hear that the European Shooting Confederation - maybe after having looked at the German Bundesliga - has taken up the idea now, and has added a new separate "Top Gun" event in this style to the Meraker ECs:

http://www.esc-shooting.org/main/info/2 ... pgun10.pdf

The TOP GUN event was conceived with the purpose of making
shooting more attractive and exciting for spectators and media. The
underlying idea is indeed to test different final formulas to raise the
interest of TV and enhance the popularity of the shooting sport.

Alexander

I've shot a few "elimination" type finals and they are fun.

Good for spectators too, ISSF needs to move that way and stop worrying about whether I shoot in jeans!

Alexander wrote:Those who would like a bit more of "spectator appeal" will doubtlessly be glad to hear that the European Shooting Confederation - maybe after having looked at the German Bundesliga - has taken up the idea now, and has added a new separate "Top Gun" event in this style to the Meraker ECs:

That the ESC is looking to the Bundesliga is quite obvious considering their ESC Youth League, which I hope has come to stay and also hope that the next season will feature some of the top countries missing from the first one (where were Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, the Czech Republic?). Granted, the 3-on-3 format makes it a little less open and interesting than the Bundesliga's 5-on-5, but I still think it's a great thing.

Regarding the actual Top Gun competition, I think it's really nice that the ESC is trying new formats, but I have some doubts about this particular format. Having some of the rules "at the discretion of the host" does not seem very objective, and especially I think it's a major mistake to dim down the monitors. What we need in order to be interesting, even more than knock-out competitions, is immediate response to what we actually do. Not someone telling the spectators or the media afterwards who had the better shot, but actually being able to show the hits as soon as they are made. This has been our greatest shortcoming in the past, and choosing not to use the power of electronic targets to overcome it is just wrong. Note, I haven't seen much of the competitions. I have watched the official video (almost at the bottom here), and it gives an impression of the general spirit of the thing but is extremely poorly produced when it comes to what happens in the actual competition...

On knock-out formats in general, I agree they are a good thing. They have done a lot to promote sports like archery and bowling, which were previously as uninteresting to watch as a shooting match without a final. The new running target format is also great to watch. There are some obstacles though, such as taking a lot of time. The archers shoot 12 arrows in each elimination match, and I think shooters should, at any rate, not accept less than that (it's the shooting Olympics, not the lottery Olympics, right?). So an entire tournament takes a couple of days. This is not so large a problem for archery with only one Olympic event, but more difficult for shooting with 15. Also we have the problem of multi-part events like three positions. (Olympic archery was previously a combination of shooting from 30, 50, 70 and 90 metres. When they switched to knock-out matches, they also dropped everything but the 70-metre distance. Would we really be willing to drop our "blue band" event, either in favour of a kneeling-only one or in favour of dropping the kneeling position entirely from the Olympics?)

At the end of the day, I think the Olympic format we have now is pretty fine for the precision events. As far as the 25-metre events are concerned, we are in much worse shape. The finals in these events, which really could and should be media-friendly, are almost impossible to follow. Switching to knock-out formats, only having one shooter shooting at a time (again, like the archers), and perhaps dropping the decimals (great for precision events, but making it harder to keep track in the fast pace) would potentially make these boring things really fun to watch. The perfect pistol event for television would certainly be 5-shot air pistol on falling targets with a man-to-man single elimination format, yes? Each match consisting of, say, 5-6 series. I can't believe the ISSF 5-shot air pistol rules don't already suggest that.

Joakim wrote:The perfect pistol event for television would certainly be 5-shot air pistol on falling targets with a man-to-man single elimination format, yes? Each match consisting of, say, 5-6 series. I can't believe the ISSF 5-shot air pistol rules don't already suggest that.

I so fully agree.
It would just be perfect.

That is why the Organized Ruling Stupidity did not choose it for the Youth Olympic Games. These people simply had not understood, not even remotely understood what the concept of the YOG was.

Alexander

Alexander as much fun as the 5 shot falling plate is there just isn't enough acceptance around the world. We tried here in Canada we had it at our Nationals and Grand Prix for about four years. Sadly it has been dropped.

To force it on the YOG would nor have worked, our youth are approaching $10000 out of their own pockets just to attempt to qualify for the YOG I don't think it would have been fair to ask them to spend another $2000 in a quality 5 shot AP too.

Ere I respond, one question for better understanding:

Richard H wrote:our youth are approaching $10000 out of their own pockets just to attempt to qualify for the YOG

How so? The travel fare to the qualification event cannot be that high?
And for those who had met a nationally specified minimum consideration score before, the federations would and should either pay for, or at least give a stipend to the fare?

Alexander

Richard H wrote:Alexander as much fun as the 5 shot falling plate is there just isn't enough acceptance around the world. We tried here in Canada we had it at our Nationals and Grand Prix for about four years. Sadly it has been dropped.

To force it on the YOG would nor have worked

I understand Alexander's point that the YOG is deliberately special, but I do agree with Richard here, this is not the way to promote 5-shot air pistol. Economics aside, I just don't think that interested (non-youth) shooters would be able to use the YOG as a springboard to get the event onto the championships. After participation in the YOG, the youngster would retire his gun (or even sell it to a shooter who is four years younger) and forget about the event. Bleak? Yes, but I think it's a fair assumption.

So what is the way to promote 5-shot air pistol? I don't really know. Here in Sweden, as I think also in Finland, the sport gained some minor popularity when the Steyr LP5 and Feinwerkbau's equivalent were new, some competitions were held, it even made its way into the national championships. Then, interest faded quickly. It's still on the national championship programme (typically shot the day before men's air pistol) but we are now in the weird situation where that is the only competition throughout the year. Participation never reaches double digits. Plus it's shot on paper targets, so it's not all that interesting to spectators either. (Swedes still sometimes buy these guns, for practice for standard pistol or our national field shooting event for instance. But most, of course, do not have them.)

In other words, while 5-shot air pistol could be a great event, one of the things to renew interest in our sport, it's certainly far from there. Short of someone arranging an international competition with huge money awards to attract top-level established shooters (both RFP shooters and AP shooters) and also make them actually practice for the event, it seems to be one of those things caught in a Catch-22. Which is a shame.