The Olympic Games are biggest, most important and most watched sports competition in the world. They take place every four years and 2012 is an Olympic year. The Opening Ceremony of the XXXth Summer Olympic Games will take place in London on 27 July. On the following morning, the first gold medal of the Games will be awarded to the winner of the Women’s Air Rifle event. That will be the first of 15 Olympic rifle, pistol and shotgun events to be contested on London’s Royal Artillery Barracks Shooting Venue during the first ten days of the Games. 390 of the 10,500 athletes who compete in the 26 sports on the London program will be shooters from at least 103 countries. Shooting in the Olympic Games is big, important and practiced all over the world. In addition to having the honor of awarding the Games’ first gold medal, Shooting’s total of 103 participating nations likely will rank third among all Olympic sports.
Gun owners and target shooters of all types can say with pride, “Shooting is my Olympic sport.” Many of them will follow reports on the Shooting competitions that take place in London where USA shooters will strive to win medals on this most prestigious world sports stage. The London Olympic Organizing Committee (LOCOG) recently hosted an ISSF World Cup that was also a Pre-Olympic Test Competition conducted as one of a series of LOCOG’s “London Prepares” test competitions. This report will give those interested in the upcoming Olympic Shooting events the latest information about how 2012 Olympic Shooting preparations are progressing.
THE ORGANIZATION. Organizing the Olympic Games is a massive undertaking that involves thousands of people and billions of dollars. LOCOG describes their challenge in conducting 26 Olympics sports and 20 Paralympic sports as the equivalent to staging 46 World Championships simultaneously. LOCOG is working in partnership with the British government that is building the stadium and sports facilities that will host the Games.
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Finals Range Exterior. All of the rifle and pistol ranges at the London Olympic Venue feature this same distinctive exterior architectural style. This large structure houses the 10m/25m/50m Rifle and Pistol Finals Range.
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THE SHOOTING RANGES. The British government’s Olympic Development Authority is building the Olympic Shooting Venue at East London’s Royal Artillery Barracks at a cost of 36 million pounds. The bus trip from the Olympic Village to the range will be less than 30 minutes, which will give shooting athletes their shortest travel to the range in several Olympiads. The Venue includes a combined 50m and 10m Rifle and Pistol Range, a 25m Pistol Range, a Rifle and Pistol Finals Range and a Shotgun Range with three fields. In addition, there are many other separate facilities to provide offices, a media and television center, an armory, lounges for athletes and officials and spectator services. A downside to having such a splendid venue in the heart of London’s Olympic venue complex is that it is a temporary venue destined to be torn down after the Games. Three of these ranges will be moved to Glasgow, Scotland to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, but once again it has been impossible for Shooting to gain a more permanent legacy that would give the Olympics a more lasting impact for shooters in Great Britain.
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Finals Range Interior. This is where the top eight shooters in each rifle and pistol event conclude their competitions in shot-by-shot Finals. This photo shows, from top to bottom, monitors for each shooter’s target, the 50m targets, eight finalists on the line, the Range officer control station and the ISSF-TV production center.
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Finals Range Spectator Seating. Spectator seats in the Finals Range will be filled with 2,000 spectators and hundreds of media and VIPs for each Olympic Shooting Final.
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25m Range Interior. Qualification round competition for two 25m pistol events, 25m Pistol Women and 25m Rapid-Fire Pistol Men, will be staged in this range that is equipped with 40 electronic targets and electronic score display systems for spectators.
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10m/50m Range Exterior. A 60-point 10m air gun range and a 70-point 50m smallbore rifle and pistol range are combined into one range building. All targets are electronic. The 50m firing area is walled and baffled.
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Skeet and Trap Ranges. The five shotgun events on the Olympic program will be contested on three combined skeet and trap ranges. The Shotgun Finals Range also has seating for 2,000 spectators. The shotgun ranges are enclosed on the front by an 89 foot high net to capture the fired lead shot.
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THE PRE-OLYMPIC TEST COMPETITION. The test competitions in London were staged as an ISSF World Cup on 17-28 April with athletes from 100 countries participating, the most ever for an ISSF World Cup. The 800 plus athletes that competed is more than double the 390 athletes that will be allowed to compete in the Olympics this summer. This huge number plus unseasonably cold, wet, windy weather made the World Cup a supreme test of LOCOG preparations for the Games. By all measures, they passed the test with flying colors. London is prepared for the XXXth Summer Olympic Games.
The Pre-Olympic Test Competition in London also served as a preview of the Olympic competitions that can be expected this summer. Scores were surprisingly high considering how bad the weather was. Yl Siling of China shot a 400 in the 10m Air Rifle Women Qualification, only to be beaten by Germany’s Sonja Pfeilschifter, who fired 398 plus a 105.0 Final. Six 397s did not make the women’s air rifle final. Ten shooters with 596s did not make the men’s air rifle final. In the 50m 3x40 Men event, Are Hansen of Norway shot 1182 in the Elimination while Nicco Campriani of Italy, who is a recent West Virginia Univ. graduate, shot 1179 plus 99.2 to win the event.
The top medal winning nations in the London World Cup were Russia and China with six each. Italy won five medals followed by the USA and Ukraine with four medals each. USA medal winners were Matt Emmons, 50m 3x40 Rifle Men; Kim Rhode, Skeet Women; Kayle Browning, Trap Women and Mike McPhail, 50m Prone Rifle Men. The USA Shooting Team is prepared to contend for several medals in London.
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Cold Weather. The headgear worn by these two finalists in the 50m 3x20 Rifle Women Final tells a lot about weather conditions during the test competition.
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USA Olympic Shooting Team. Matt Emmons (l.) and Kim Rhode (r.) have both already qualified for the USA team that will compete in London. Both won medals in the Pre-Olympic Test Competition and are leading contenders to win medals in the 2012 Olympic Games this summer.
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* Gary Anderson is the CMP
Director of Civilian Marksmanship Emeritus. He is also a
Vice President of the International Shooting Sport
Federation (ISSF) and is one of two ISSF Technical Delegates
for the 2012 Olympic Games. He recently was in London for
the Pre-Olympic Shooting Test Competition and provided this
report about London’s preparations for Shooting in this
summer’s Olympics.
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