TargetTalk

In Olympic news:
50-meter Free Pistol: OUT
Olympic Breakdancing: IN

Link: http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sp ... ocid=ientp

Pass the .454 Casull. Saving the last round for myself.

Well, shooting is an honest sport. No thugs, no drugs, no sex scandals. It just doesn't fit in with the modern Olympics.

Well, we must have cultural diversity, mustn't we.

I did think that break dancing was long passe' now.

I thought that Parkour would be good for the Olympics in Paris. That actually is a sport that requires a lot of talent.

FFS, get over it already.

Every single Olympics has demonstration sports. There are already far too many sports & disciplines in the Olympics. Doubtful any more will be added unless others are dropped.

Shooting is currently one of the required sports. The ISSF decides how to divide up the number of disciplines/medals and how to make gender participation equal.

Each country has an Olympic committee where all the affiliated sports federations report/lobby. Each country has a different mix of sports that are currently in the Olympics and those that aren't. When there is a sport with an international federation/governing body and there are a sufficient number of countries with a national federations that sport can start lobbying the hosts of future Olympic games for inclusion as a demonstration sport.

If a demonstration sport is shown to be widely popular, older, less popular sports need to watch their backs. Because any added disciplines will be at the expense of existing disciplines being removed.


Go to each country's Olympic Committee webpage and have a look at what's fighting to replace all the old traditional sports and already has a foot in the door at the various national levels. Then, there's all the sports that are lobbying their national OC to join. Then there's all the new disciplines trying to have themselves added under existing sports.

The ISSF has had decades to equalize 50m FP. They failed and got caught with their pants down with no plan for equal gender participation fit in an odd number of disciplines and were forced by IOC edict. And they still don't seem to want to take that step. Until they do, getting 50m back in is a non-starter unless another male discipline is dropped in exchange. But then the macho bias of the ISSF and shooting sport athletes rears it's ugly head. Because male disciplines all become critical to the sport and undroppable. Even when, hypocritically, the female disciplines have never been in the Olympics.

If shooting sports are going to maintain their space on an international stage, they need to demonstrate their international appeal. And that's not done by whining about what has past or complaining about new sports. That's accomplished by raising participation at the national level in multiple countries, showing that the sport is visible and supported at the national level in multiple countries, and showing a healthy and robust level of international competition under the international governing body.

Any sport needs to show their relevance and international interest justifies the ROI in facilities for an Olympic event. And host countries through their IOC representatives want to have sports that require the building of facilities that will serve their national sports organisations after the passing of the Olympics (or make sufficient ROI during the Olympics).

Perhaps the road to gaining or maintaining Olympic disciplines should include the international body making the holding of international events less expensive. In theory, the London Olympics shooting venues for pistol and shotgun disciplines were mobile and reuseable. If the ISSF designed mobile or temporary facilities that could be copied and moved or otherwise taken down, the design could be used to create increased and better national, regional, and international competition.

I know, complaining about how unfair life is and demanding that acquired entitlements remain untouched and other people fight and do the work is far easier...

There are many articles that list the sports vying for IOC recognition and how many proposals were retained and rejected for each edition of the Olympics. Here's a fairly decent one to get an idea and with links to many related topics:
https://www.topendsports.com/events/sum ... future.htm

Sorry, above some info isn't quite right.
First I used sport/discipline when Olympic parlance is Discipline/event. (a quibble)
For the path to Olympic participation, there's arcane rules about how many votes it takes for recognised versus unrecognised sports to be included, the leeway given for demonstrations sports, and the difference between adding a disclipline compared to adding an event.
One of the steps to becoming "Olympic" is a sport needs to become recognised by the IOC. A list (indeed the association) of IOC recognised sports is here: https://www.arisf.sport/members.aspx
Includes frisbee, bowling, chess, motorcycles, bridge, korfball(?), ...

Clearly, breakdancing is more mainstream than 50 meter pistol,..

(Yes, this is SARCASM, folks.)

m1963 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:28 pm Clearly, breakdancing is more mainstream than 50 meter pistol,..

Again, the ISSF and shooting sport athletes f'd up allowing Olympic events to fall to an odd number and still maintains the sexist notion that women shouldn't have 50m.

Then the ISSF decided men's prone is critical, while the women's prone isn't. And that prone is more important than 50m.

Nothing to do with whether any other sport is more popular.

But if shooting doesn't maintain popularity above other IOC recognised sports it will become impossible to justify the costs.

But bitch and moan about a demonstration sport if it makes you feel better. But it will accomplish nothing.

Too bad whining is not an olympic sport yet

. . . . Korfball? Really?

Ramon OP wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:00 am Too bad whining is not an olympic sport yet

Certainly more participants than 50m FP.

atomicgale wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 8:14 am . . . . Korfball? Really?

Also more participants than 50m FP. And evidently far more spectators.

So why the derogatory "Really?" Sh**ing on other sports or activities does nothing to elevate the sports or activities we're interested in.
I'd argue that it's actually detrimental as outsiders with no opinion of either will be drawn to supporting the one that is the most positive and negativity will turn their opinion against supporting the activity.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see any whining by anyone -- more like disbelief.

The main criticism seems to be TOWARD those that are disappointed by the loss of shooting events in the Olympics.

The "sh**ing on" seems to be mostly toward the ISSF here....

marky-d

marky-d wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 11:33 amThe main criticism seems to be TOWARD those that are disappointed by the loss of shooting events in the Olympics.

Number of events didn't change. The only thing the IOC is accountable for is telling ALL sports that there have to be an equal number of male and female events. And ISSF/athletes decided that prone was more important than 50m FP. So pointing out that reality is sh**ing on the ISSF?

There will ALWAYS be demonstration sports. That fact doesn't mean that shooting is being overlooked or FP shouldn't have been removed. It certainly doesn't mean there are open positions for more official events and FP should be added back in by increasing the number of Shooting events.

It sucks, but alternately we might just have to accept the reality that break-dancing and maybe even bridge are more popular competitive activities than FP.

Regardless of how popular or not FP is, I don't see how any of these threads even begin to address ways to support shooting sports and increase their visibility and participation.

SlartyBartFast wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:28 pm And ISSF/athletes decided that prone was more important than 50m FP. So pointing out that reality is sh**ing on the ISSF?

It wasn't quite that simple to be fair.

The ISSF were also trying to avoid an inter-discipline war. Their recommendations to the IOC maintained 5 events for each of rifle, pistol and shotgun.

David Levene wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:52 pm The ISSF were also trying to avoid an inter-discipline war. Their recommendations to the IOC maintained 5 events for each of rifle, pistol and shotgun.

Perfect then. More fodder for the complexities doomed FP. Won't be solved by eternally complaining about it or getting worked up over demonstrations sports.
What I will fault the IOC for, is if they wanted gender parity all sports should have been given an equal number of events.
For 2020, the disciplines with odd numbers of events are:
Swimming (that went up 3 for 2020)
Archery (that went up one for 2020)
Boxing
Badminton
Baseball (added for 2020)
Judo (that went up one for 2020)
Shooting (low of 0, high of 21, currently 15)
Softball
Table tennis
Tennis
Triathalon (that went up one for 2020)

If the ISSF had implemented women's 50m FP a few years ago, it should have been easy to have one event added and have had women's and men's FP. No new facilities would be needed after all.

Mind you with so many other disciplines getting extra events (and odd numbers too) the argument that FP had to go and that the solution couldn't have been as simple as adding a women's event is pretty pathetic.

And the mixed teams stuff just seems like nonsense.

Should lobby to get the air shooting sports into the winter Olympics. And add other events to the summer Olympics.

(But, IMO, the priority should still be gender parity in ISSF events and promotion of ISSF activities over the Olympics)

Some glaring inaccuracies here. IOC doesn’t want equal male/female *participation*, they want equal *outcome*. You could make disciplines co-ed (and IIRC, some were, including Free Pistol), and the IOC still wouldn’t be satisfied unless more women started winning medals...this is problematic because the shooting sports don’t attract nearly as many women as men, so the talent pool is much shallower. IIRC, the segregation by sex of a lot of disciplines was done more to appease middle eastern countries participating in the Olympics, rather than most shooters around the world. You’ll find males at local/regional (and national?) matches shooting disciplines that are female-only at the Olympic level, like sport pistol, and likely vice versa.

Well all that would be a little more powerful if the ISSF was mixed. But they aren't. And there is no way for women to participate in FP and a couple.other disciplines past their national competitions. If their national federation disregards ISSF rules.
Segregation by sex has been the rule for sports and coed competition is the rare exception. Shooting was coed in 76.
The participation of women will never really be encouraged if they have to compete with men and only see men winning.
Shooting might be unique in that women could stand a chance of being equals. But that certainly doesn't apply to other sports.
Moan about middle Eastern countries once all the ISSF member countries are running mixed events only except for the middle East.

I guess the next step is to add computer games

Many of the X-games, and extreme sports are slowly being added to the olympics, the logical progression is that e-sports will be added eventually.

Definitely. But why the committee has started crossing out some disciplines? Actually I have nothing against e-sport but I hope their action won't touch traditional disciplines a lot.
I was wondering, what kind of Olympic Games e-sport will be added in? Summer or winter?