Shooting in at the Victoria Commonwealth Games

The shooting world has been heartened to learn that after being excluded form the Birmingham Commonwealth Games this year, Shooting has been included in the programme for Victoria 2026. This is undoubtedly good news, even when considering the caveats and compromises that have been made. It does nonetheless require the examination of certain key questions about the future direction of the sport, or at the least some disciplines.

What’s in (and what’s not)

The bid by Shooting Australia and the ISSF (yes, for it is they), included:

• 10m Air Rifle
• 10m Air Pistol
• Trap
• Fullbore Rifle
• Para-shooting (Air Rifle/Pistol)

This bid was accepted, apart from Fullbore Rifle. This means that in contrast to 2018, the programme has dropped:

• 50 Metre Rifle (Prone & 3P)
• Fullbore Rifle
• 25M Pistol
• Double Trap
• Skeet

As a 50M Prone Rifle shooter whose backup plan was to go and learn to shoot full bore, this has obviously narked me.

Nonetheless, the logical part of my brain does understand - the reason given for dropping 50M rifle, 25m pistol, double trap and skeet from the bid was to keep athlete numbers down, particularly since para-shooting was being added (no para-shooting disciplines have been included at Commonwealth level previously). The Commonwealth Games have seen huge growth over the past few editions and are struggling to find willing host cities. The keen eyed will have noticed a pattern developing in the 21st Century:

• 2002 - Manchester, England
• 2006 - Melbourne, Australia
• 2010 - New Delhi, India
• 2014 - Glasgow, Scotland
• 2018 - Gold Coast, Australia
• 2022 - Birmingham, England (after Durban failed to get it together)
• 2026 - Victoria, Australia

Aside from the 2010 edition in India, it’s basically the UK and Australia. It is now probably beyond the realistic ability of a Caribbean nation to host the Games (as Jamaica did in 1966). Even New Zealand and Canada look askance at the cost involved. Consequently there is a cap on beds in the village, and with pressure from new or demonstration sports (Victoria will feature coastal rowing for instance), something has to give. I get it. Money is an object.

Times change, the programme can’t stay static can it?

They do, and it can’t. The current challenge I see is the marginalisation of small nations. There are some Commonwealth nations (the likes of St Helena, the Falkland Islands, Norfolk Islands) who have - in the past - sent exclusively shooters. Whilst they have diversified (to my knowledge, nobody sent an exclusively shooting team in 2014 or 2018), those countries still sent much smaller teams to Birmingham than to Gold Coast. The lack of shooting really hurt them. As a double-whammy, those teams tend to be biased towards 50 Metre (Prone) Rifle and Fullbore Rifle - two events which will not be contested in Victoria. So for them, the 2026 programme may be scant improvement over no shooting at all.

I think this is a point worth labouring because it’s all very well for the English or Canadian Shooting Federations to say “At least it’s in, we can send a team, even if some athletes will be disappointed that their disciplines has been dropped”. But for some of the smallest Commonwealth partners, this may feel like a snub. As I have also previously mentioned, Prone and Fullbore tend to be the events where athletes can enjoy a long career - past the point where they have stopped being competitive in standing or three-position.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: The Commonwealth Games are not a mini-Olympics. They are about inclusivity, and there is no reason for the programme to be built off the Olympic programme. The ISSF need to learn this, and we need a strong and robust Commonwealth Shooting Federation to stand up for the distinctly Commonwealth-flavoured disciplines - particularly those which are not included in the Olympics, for which the Commonwealth Games has been the pinnacle event.

The hard-nosed answer of course is that it’s now up to national federations to move their athletes to other disciplines - most likely Air. But what if people don’t want to - what if (shock!) they enjoy their discipline and want to pursue it? For a full bore shooter, 10m air is no substitute for .308 at 1000yards. More on that later.

What comes after Victoria?

Received wisdom is that 2030 will be hosted by Hamilton in Canada. They however are pursuing a distributed approach, potentially hosting the netball in Jamaica (taking the Games to nations which can’t necessarily host the whole thing), with shooting outsourced to Gibraltar.

Now, any athlete will tell you that being in a remote village sucks a bit. There is an excitement and atmosphere to being in the main village, seeing team-mates come into dinner with medals and so on. This is lost somewhat when you’re in a remote hotel detached from the main event. But even with remote venues like Bisley (in 2002) or Barry Budden (2014), there was the possibility to attend the opening and closing ceremonies. This will not be the case if you’re on another continent! So that’s a downer. If shooting is in Gibraltar for 2030, one would certainly hope it is part of the main village for 2034 - swap sports in and out to avoid anyone being marginalised.

Being remote however does open up significant possibilities. The downside of Gibraltar is that it cannot host Fullbore rifle (without closing the airport and shooting along the runway!). But a very massive plus is that any argument about village capacity evaporates. The question is really “How many hotel rooms does Gibraltar have?”, and the answer is “More than enough”.

Being fully remote takes the limits off. Fullbore notwithstanding, shooting could host an epic programme - 10/25/50m rifle and pistol, plus para-shooting, and a full shotgun programme. Heck, why not slot in Target Sprint whilst we’re at it?

It’s unclear what the funding arrangements would be for a Hamilton/Gibraltar partnership, but it’s reasonable to assume the Gibraltar Government might be subsidising the events they host. This takes budgetary pressure off the Hamilton organisers and opens the door for more events to make regular appearances. Archery has not been included since Delhi 2010. The ability of interested nations to sponsor an event as a partner could see some sports included more regularly.

What of the Commonwealth Shooting Federation Championships?

The CSF Championship typically takes place around six months before the Commonwealth Games as a test-event and shake-down for the venues. The programme typically matched the Games programme, but this is potentially time for a division.

The precise venues for the Victoria events have not been confirmed, but the likely candidate for Shotgun is a significant clay shooting club with both Trap and Skeet facilities. There would be no conflict in running a full-programme shotgun event. The facility gets its test event for Trap, but Skeet and DT competitors get a championship. Assuming the availability of suitable fullbore and smallbore ranges, these events could also be held - the facilities won’t have been renovated for prepped to “Games standard”, but athletes will manage. Really, we’d be happy just to be there.

But assume that doesn’t happen, what about the rest of us?

Well what indeed. Speaking from personal experience, direction is a question the Welsh Smallbore Rifle Association has wrestled with this year. The WSRA has in past years largely focussed on feeding development rifle athletes into the Welsh Target Shooting Federation’s High Performance programmes - with the aim of winning Commonwealth Games medals, as well as feeding into British Shooting’s performance programme to represent GB at World Cup/Championship and Olympic level.

Supporting Welsh athletes on GB programmes is still a job, but no CWG route currently exists for any WSRA discipline (Air Rifle is handled by the Welsh Airgun Association). So what do we do? The consensus is a refocussing on grassroots clubs, as well as focussing on non-ISSF (i.e. mostly NSRA) events since smallbore is increasingly being sidelined at Olympic and CWG level.

The new focus must be on developing grassroots and inter-club competition, and developing athletes to compete for Wales at NSRA matches such as the August Home Nations match at Bisley, or for GB in the annual Dewar, Randle and Wakefield Matches; getting juniors into the Drew team and qualifying welsh shooters into the Roberts and Pershing teams.

This may also mean hacking around and innovating with formats - ISSF formats are increasingly media-oriented and of limited relevance for club and domestic competition. Germany has never been afraid of using “ISSF-like” formats for domestic consumption (e.g. the Bundesliga), and neither should the anglosphere. There has been a sense sometimes in England (or at least at Bisley) that the ISSF rulebook is “serious stuff” and must be followed to the letter. Outside of - perhaps - the British 50M Championships, this is simply unnecessary. The Scots have had long-running success with their Grand Prix circuit, which takes a slightly more relaxed approach to an ISSF-type shoot. The new finals have been derided by athletes and officials alike as too long, too complicated and not fun to shoot. If nothing else, this is the shakeup that small bore in the UK has perhaps needed. Diminished Olympic presence, out of the Commonwealths (for the time being). We have to make our own fun now.

Conclusion

So good or bad?

• Very Good - Shooting is in the CWG
• Very Good - Para-shooting is now on the programme
• Potentially Good - If Hamilton-Gibraltar plays out well, we could end up with a full shooting programme in 2030
• Iffy - For the time being, the CWG has gone from having a healthy and diverse programme to having a subset of the Olympic programme, one which doesn’t really suit a lot of the smallest teams.
• Concern - The ISSF appear to be significantly influencing the programme, to the detriment of non-Olympic disciplines.