India to host 2022 Commonwealth Shooting Events
Exciting news! India will host the Shooting events for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Organisers had omitted the Optional sport due to athlete quota limitations for the village. British Shooting were also asking them to spend an eyewatering £15m on the satellite venue in Surrey.. Whilst Cycling will be at the Lea Valley Velodrome in London, it is being held such a distance from Birmingham only because it is a world-class facility in a ready-to-go condition. Sadly, Bisley does not represent the Shooting equivalent. Bisley has suffered a dire lack of investment and maintenance since the 2002 Commonwealth Games renovation. Although the NRA have picked up the pace in the last few years, the site needs significant work to reach the standard expected for the Games.
The Indians also plan to put Archery on the programme, with medals to be counted towards the official medal tallies for the Games. As I wrote at the time, it was deeply concerning that Organisers had not selected an alternative “aiming” or “skill” sport. In their strive for a more diverse Games, they included Para Table-Tennis, Women’s Cricket and Beach Volleyball (a sport noted by social historians for its broad popularity in the Black Country /s). This helped tick many welcome demographic boxes (Women and Para athletes) but left a hole in the diversity of sport by simply adding variations on the art of knocking a ball across a net. The decision not to include Shooting would have been easier to swallow had Archery been included in its place.
Programme
So what will the programme be? The traditional CWG Programme or Olympic-plus-Fullbore proposed to Birmingham Organisers in 2018 (throwing Prone Rifle, Free Pistol and Double Trap under the bus)?
We don’t know yet. The Indians probably want to go all-out. The Games Organisers will want to limit medal-count to prevent one sport biasing the medal tables. The normal Commonwealth Shooting Programme features 21 medal events whilst the ISSF-preferred programme has 17. It’s easy to see how a dedicated Shooting event might try to include other disciplines and end up with 25-30 medals.
For their part, the ISSF have proudly stated that:
The ISSF will guarantee full compliance with the rules and regulations of the Shooting Sport and provide all the necessary technical support. In addition it was proposed to expand the competition program by including 4 Mixed Team events, 3 of which are already included in the program for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
This would seem to imply that the proposal is Olympic-plus-Fullbore. A fourth “Mixed Team” event would likely be Fullbore Pairs, which the observant will notice is not an expansion. Fullbore Pairs has always been in the Commonwealths, and was always Mixed (more specifically “Open”). It is an “expansion” on the Olympic Programme, but this is the Commonwealth Games not the Olympics - the programme was already larger! One wonders if ISSF influence is trying to impose a 1 Man/1 Woman rule in Fullbore as per their other Mixed Teams.
You really don’t like the Olympic Programme do you?
The ISSF developed the current Olympic Programme to meet a very specific set of requirements:
- Gender Parity across an odd number of events (15);
- Maintaining Discipline Parity between Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun;
- No Mixed-Individual events allowed.
In that respect, the ISSF’s solution for 2020 was the least-bad option. It does what it needs to do and must be viewed in that context. Nobody would use that programme as a model for competitions where those requirements do not exist.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the Commonwealth Games are not a “mini-Olympics”. They are the Friendly Games, and promote camaraderie and cooperation around the globe. They feature such events as Lawn Bowls for heaven’s sake! Whilst the competition is serious (and for many, the closest they will get to the Olympics), it retains that separation. I congratulate India for securing Shooting at the Birmingham Games. It is my hope that India will push to include Prone Rifle, Free Pistol and Double Trap. Although maligned at Olympic level, they remain popular international disciplines. The CGF can and should offer participants a major multi-sport Games to compete at.