No shooting at Birmingham Commonwealth Games

[craig9mm]

a major snub,Issf response

The ISSF learned with great regret the decision of the Birmingham Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth Games 2022,that the Shooting Sport would not be included in the program for the Games.

A large number of countries and territories will now not have the opportunity to send their best athletes to Birmingham. Most importantly, many athletes and nations will be denied the chance to compete for medals in a major global international competition.

Certainly, we can hardly judge whether the thesis about the financial expenditure is true or not. The Birmingham OC nor CGF has ever consulted with us about any issue, including the competition program, since December 2018 when the ISSF delivered its bid presentation and offered its help.

It is well known that the national Shooting Centre at Bisley has all the necessary venues in Olympic shooting events. They have the necessary qualified and experienced staff as well. This means that no serious financial expenditure is needed for venue construction and staff training. Accommodating athletes in Birmingham would not seem to be an issue. Moreover, the competitions in 10m events can be constructed in any exhibition hall or gym with length of about 15m.

The decision which has been made decreases the popularity of the Commonwealth Games and impacts negatively on many countries, dependencies and territories of the Commonwealth.


British Shooting response similar to above,but they hope shooting will be back in 2026.......living in hope

[gingernut]

I presume the decision was made on the basis that shooting involves guns?

[Hemmers]

In all probability the decision has been made on the basis that they were unwilling to run any additional villages. Having the shooting at Bisley would have involved setting up additional security perimeters both for the camp and for a remote athletes village/accommodation. They did it in 2002 for Manchester, but that was under duress - the CG General Assembly weren't going to ratify Manchester otherwise (every country gets one vote, from India down to St Helena. Lots of countries are very pro-shooting). Birmingham - being appointed by a CGF Executive Committee in a rush to replace Durban - was not subject to that leverage or democratic scrutiny.

This would gain weight given the interesting comment from Louise Martin that there was a compromise offer on the table.

But Dame Louise revealed shooting could have been part of the programme if they had accepted a proposal of including only the small bore rifle and pistol events.

Pistol and small bore rifle shooting involves competitors firing at stationary targets across distances ranging from 10 to 50 metres and Birmingham 2022 believe a temporary venue could have been built to accommodate those events.

Dame Louise told insidethegames, however, that shooting wanted the four events contested at Gold Coast 2018 - full bore, pistol, rifle and shotgun - to be part of the programme and staged at the National Shooting Centre in Bisley - 130 miles south in Surrey.

"I know the shooting fraternity will not be pleased but it wasn't easy for Birmingham to make this decision," Dame Louise told insidethegames.

"The only place shooting could have been held in total is in Bisley and Birmingham and the West Midlands are not prepared to put money in refurbishing that venue.

"Birmingham did go out of their way of trying to help shooting but they wanted all four disciplines with no compromise."

I suspect there's a couple of things here, and it needs to be understood that within "Shooting", the CGF sees not Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun but the three categories of:

1. Fullbore Rifle;
2. Shotgun;
3. [Smallbore/Air] Rifle & Pistol (so 50m Rifle/Pistol, 10m Air Rifle/Pistol, 25M Cartridge Pistol).

When Louise Martin talks about "four disciplines", she's splitting out pistol and rifle, which is not actually how it works. (2) and (3) basically amount to the Olympic programme, whilst Fullbore is a much more CW thing (hence why aside from Americans, the bulk of international visitors to the NRA Imperial Meeting are from Canada/South Africa/ANZAC).

In principle they can take one, two or all three of those constituent sub-categories in the same way they can mix and match "Cycling" events to include or exclude Track Cycling, Road Cycling and Downhill MTB. Case in point, Durban initially had shooting but without Fullbore - only 2/3. Fullbore was later added before they lost the Games entirely.

So what do I think happened?

1. The offer was probably along the lines of "If you can fit into an existing security bubble, then you're in, but we're not setting up any more villages". In that circumstance you could trivially accommodate the smallbore and airgun in the NEC or another existing venue and athletes would be able to stay in the Central Village - not some random hotel in Dundee with armed police on the door as per the Glasgow/Barry Buddon Games. Shotgun could possibly be done (they managed for London 2012), but you need a bit more space. Fullbore is right out because there are single-digit numbers of 1000 yard ranges in the UK, and none near Brum.

2. As far as I know, the outcome of the presentation by British Shooting and the ISSF has not been made public. We don't know what was said or offered (other than the ISSF supposedly offered an unspecified financial contribution). What we do know is that they've clearly misjudged the CGF and the Organising Committee, calling their bluff on an all-or-nothing gambit and losing. Moreover, the new (Russian) ISSF President has been throwing money about like there's no tomorrow. I would not be entirely surprised to learn that he'd gone in with a chequebook and expected to buy his way in - as is the done thing in Russia. This may have gone down entirely the wrong way. That last bit is entirely speculation on my part, but let's consider what we know from Russian football owners. It's one possibility as good as any others.

And this raises a new point.

It's a bit murky as to what British Shooting and the ISSF were doing there in the first place. This is the Commonwealth Games - a Birmingham Games is an English Games, not a British event. So that's the remit of the English Target Shooting Federation, not British Shooting, backed up by the Commonwealth Shooting Federation - not the ISSF.

Firstly, the ISSF does not cover fullbore rifle (that's ICFRA), and the CWG have never been an ISSF sanctioned or approved event.
Secondly, the ISSF don't recognise England; Scotland; Wales; Northern Ireland; Jersey; Guernsey; the Isle of Man or Gibraltar as countries. We're all just GB to them.

Traditionally, discussions should have been with the ETSF and the CSF. So there's been a bit of a coup d'etat in terms of who the CGF are talking to. This is concerning because the ETSF answers to its member groups (English Smallbore/Clays/English XX Fullbore), and those groups ultimately answer to their individual members. Just as I can ask questions of the Welsh management at the Welsh Target Shooting Federation through my membership of the WSRA. British Shooting is not a membership organisation and answer only to themselves, with consequently little transparency.

So aside from the devastating news that we won't have the opportunity to compete in 2022, there's been a shift in the sport's politics and power-structure which bears investigating since the new incumbents have glossed over the oddity of their involvement. The CSF have been a bit dysfunctional for a while, so the ISSF have evidently decided it's time to move into the power vacuum.


I would be interested to know the detailed reasons why Archery was excluded. Archery is the poor cousin of the Commonwealth Games - it's only ever been included twice - and we Shooters think we have it hard! It is also quite easy to accommodate and one might have thought that the CGF in building a balanced programme would have sought to ensure that in the absence of Shooting that some other target sport was showcased. But apparently they've just stuck more ball-sports in instead.

[Powderfinger]

Thanks for that informed perspective, Hemmers. I did wonder why the shooting sport advocates had not offered to drop fullbore rifle in order to try to get shooting accommodated at the Birimingham CGF. After all, there are existing venues in the West Midlands that could have been adapted to allow pistol, airgun, smallbore rifle and shotgun events. Some of the shooting organisations have been part of the problem, as usual. I went to the shooting at Barry Buddon in 2014 so I know what CGF shooting involves. Hence, when the CGF 2022 was moved to Birmingham, I immediately thought that all shooting events except fullbore rifle could take place at venues within a thirty minute drive of Perry Barr but fullbore rifle might have to miss out in 2022. The veiled behaviour and political naivety of certain shooting organisations plus the peculiarly English obsession with Bisley seems to have kiboshed shooting totally for 2022. High time shooters took control of these organisations and put astute people in charge. Pity about the archers missing out as well. Hope to see a better turnout when I go to the NSRA AGM. Join your sports organisations and be sure to vote whenever you can, folks. Do not support undemocratic and unaccountable organisations.

[RobinC]

We can debate the weaknesses of British shooting governing bodies until the cows come home, and the political issues within ours, be they UK, GB or one of the English or Home nation organisations, then split again by disciplines, none of this has helped our case, BUT that is not the true reason we as a sport are being excluded.

Security is touted, also rubbish, perhaps it is accepted as genuine only because the CWG organisers have created OTT and un necessary conditions, but in July, Bisley will host the Imperial meeting (does so every year, this year the 150th), with more shooting competitors, many from CW countries, than would come to the CWG (many are the same people!) and with their own guns, having travelled from around the world, the security is managed perfectly.

Oh no, this is about income from the events, ours (and Archery) are not spectator sports, the bias from the organisers is towards events that they can take money for bums on seats, or are televisual, we can present many valid and reasoned arguments and simple ways to provide those events, but they will always be very low down the priority to provide, athletics, gymnastics, swimming, and the ball games, which will produce income.

Sad but true.

Have Fun
Robin

[Hemmers]

As I say, most of this is speculation on my part. It's "informed" in as much as I've had the privilege to be in a High Performance programme and seen some of the challenges the IOC and CGF face in terms of costs, finding host cities, etc (not that I've personally made it to a Games, much to my chagrin).

People are very quick to shout that it's all anti-gun this and anti-gun that but the refreshing thing from being on that programme is finding that at that level people just don't care. Shooting is a sport, that's all there is to it. They don't bat an eyelid when you walk through the door Sport Wales with a (boxed!) rifle and sign out the keys to the armoury. But I've fielded questions from club shooters along the lines of

"Well where are they hosting the sailing? Not Birmingham! If they can do a remote village for sailing then they can run the Shooting at Bisley".

Um, they're not - Sailing isn't at the Commonwealths There's a lot of nonsense and false-equivalencies being drawn.

Which isn't to say everyone is on board of course. I'm sure there are individuals here and there who narrow their eyes at the notion of Shooting, possibly more prevalent from the Council side of the organising committee than the Sports side (i.e. people without regular professional contact with international sport, who mostly know about guns from Midlands Today). But for the most part it's straight up business decisions - hosting/accommodation costs, number of athletes and projected ticket/merch sales.


As for Fullbore. It's a tricky one. Most CWG athletes I know will tell you that being in the main Village is always better than being remote. Gold Coast, Melbourne and Delhi all offered that. But they're also very fond of the fullbore competitors and are willing to sacrifice "the full Games experience" for the sake of their inclusion, only staying in the main Village for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

I have a lot of admiration for the way Fullbore have stuck to their principles and not compromised their format to create Olympic style finals. But they also need to get with the times because they're pretty much the only discipline in the entire Games that goes un-televised on the basis that there's no Final or focal point to build a broadcast around. They need to develop a format so that broadcasters can show the last 1000yd shoot as a "Final", taking inspiration (say) from Heptathlon which is another sport where athletes start with a lead built from previous events.

I believe Sky did such a thing for the Queen's Final many years ago. Refined, using electronic targets and scoreboards they could sell the discipline to broadcasters - as opposed to the current scenario where everyone else has a pre-defined televisual format cribbed from the Olympics and Fullbore just kinda shrugs and says they're not televisable. The continued use of paper targets is not going to cut it in 2026, spectators and organisers want live, online scores - same as we get for other disciplines. The fact the Electronic targets were a disaster in Delhi (which I've seen cited as a reason for their non-use in Barry Buddon ) is obviously not relevant 10 years later when tech and expertise have moved on.

Security is touted, also rubbish, perhaps it is accepted as genuine only because the CWG organisers have created OTT and un necessary conditions, but in July, Bisley will host the Imperial meeting (does so every year, this year the 150th), with more shooting competitors, many from CW countries, than would come to the CWG (many are the same people!) and with their own guns, having travelled from around the world, the security is managed perfectly.

Sorry Robin, but I think that's a bit unfair comparison and won't be until the NRA start doing bag-checks and putting all visitors through metal-arches at the Camp entrance. Yes, it is true, Bisley will host more shooters for the Imperial than they would for a CWG. Yes, there are many firearms on camp. Yes, they manage security. But that won't cut it for CWG organisers, and hasn't since the Munich Olympics. The athlete accommodations in Dundee had 24/7 armed officers on the doors, bag searches and the rest. Same for the venue with strict separation of athletes and competitors (at least in terms of field-of-play and athlete areas - nothing to stop an athlete going into the public spaces to mingle when they're not competing).

The CWG is the third largest multi-sport Games in the world. If someone were looking to disrupt it, a remote site run to Imperial-level security would be a very soft target. Bisley as a site is basically impossible to secure in serious terms - there are plenty of remote spots where you could breach the fenceline without being noticed. You can have a soft-check onto the camp, but that would have to be backed up by a secondary bubble and hard-checks into individual venues such as NCSC or the LRC.

Of course you could (quite rightly) point out that other venues like Cannock Chase (for the Mountain Biking) are similarly difficult to secure, but the argument will be that it doesn't involve firearms, which tends to close down the discussion.

You're quite right in that cost and income are significant factors. Which is why security and remote villages/venues is such as issue. Security is non-trivially difficult - as G4S demonstrated at London. Troops2Target is being paid for in part by the money G4S were made to pay the Army for bailing them out with personnel in 2012. But even then, pretty much every event sells out at major Games, including Shooting. They don't struggle to fill seats, it then comes down to how many events and spectators they can aggregate and have sharing each site/bubble, some of which are cheaper to run than others (e.g. the NEC, which is purpose-built with segregated public front-of-house and secure back-of-house areas, segregated visitor parking and freight/lorry parking, etc).

Oh no, this is about income from the events, ours (and Archery) are not spectator sports

I dunno, Archery's head-to-head knockout stages and finals at the Olympics are quite televisual. Better yet spectators can see the arrow and its impact on the target (unlike a .22 bullet). It has a similar appeal to Clays, which are the most visual of the Shooting events. The IOC has praised World Archery for the development of their finals formats, and it's not hard to see the ISSF have cribbed a great deal from them. We'll never match demand for 100m Final tickets, but the presentation of the sport can be fairly media friendly (even if the ISSF are going completely overboard and sacrificing the sport itself at the altar of the OBS).

[Powderfinger]

Some interesting points raised in the discussion so far. Looking at the evidence shows some more points of interest:

(1) It is clearly stated in the link by Hemmers that a limited shooting programme was offered by the CWG organisers but shooting "representatives" did not accept the offer. That report was written by an experienced sports journalist.
(2) The CWG organisers have not been against shooting in the past. Shooting was at CWG 2014 and CWG 2018.
(3) Birmingham Council do not appear to have a policy against the shooting sports: there are clubs, gunshops and gunmakers in the Bimringham Council area. At least one club is on council land.
(4)This week shooters from France and Germany are coming to the Europod 2019 sports exchange. This is an annual exchange that has the backing of the council and involves the use of council facilities, council transport and council staff culminating in a gala meeting attended by council dignatories on council premises. I met some of these council officials last year. They seemed to have no problem with target-shooting.
(4) Archery championships got shown on the BBC recently. Shooting gets shown on the BBC when the Olympics is on. With multichannels and catchup TV, all sports can be televised and live coverage is a lot less important.
(5) Shooting seemed to get a full audience attendance at CWG 2014. I had to rush to get a seat for the pistols final.

Hemmers initial comments on this matter chime with my conclusion as to why shooting has not been included. My thoughts are based on attending a CWG shooting event in the UK and following the recently torrid politics of the ISSF plus following Birmingham politics.

I conclude that the loss of shooting at the CWG 2022 is mainly down to disorganisation amongst some shooting organisations plus for some of those organisations their lack of transparency, lack of accountability and often the wrong people ending up in charge. The men in charge might be great coaches or past great competitors but I am not sure they are great diplomats and politicians. I think they are often politically naïve.

Other factors that kiboshed shooting at the CWG are the sudden change of host city, the geography of the host city and the long-term lack of development of the shooting sports in England. But mostly I think the failure of diplomacy and poor negotiation by the shooting "reps" is the reason.

[tacfoley]

As a late-comer to this thread, I'd like to say a big thanks to all who have contributed to it thus far.

[RobinC]

There is some interesting comment on the subject in the current NRA journal (Summer edition), the journal is normally available to view on the NRA website.

Regardless of the views of some comment on here from some posters as to the why's, it is all very sad, people can always find reasons why not, and its clear that had the organisers really wanted to include it, it could have been included, the NRA CEO and the ISSF chief executive felt so, and they are certainly more informed than any one on here.

Beach volley ball is in, so at least the TV can have girls in skimpy costumes, Oh sorry, its in due to its sporting excellence of course!

Its all sad, very sad

Have Fun
Robin

[Powderfinger]

The CWG organisers did want to include it. They have openly stated that they offered a limited shooting programme and people claiming to represent shooting turned it down. Perhaps the chief exec of the ISSF could publish his records of the meetings and we can see if it matches the statements published by the CWG negotiators? Then again, who asked the ISSF to get involved with organising the shooting at the CWG? Certainly no shooting organisations asked Birminghams shooting clubs to give an opinion or to help negotiate a solution even though we would have been well placed to assist.

I write as someone who shot with the then Lord Mayor of Birmingham at a charity shoot on council property a few years ago. He started reminiscing about when he used to train with the L1A1 SLR. No sign of hostility to target shooting from council officials at that event or the one I attended earlier this month.