Blimey. You would be hard put to find a shooting magazine these last months which does not feature somewhere on its pages a picture of either Ed Ling or Steve Scott and often both, each bearing a big smile whilst holding aloft their Olympic bronze medals. Winning anything on the world sporting stage has to be counted as a success and both Scott and Ling should be proud of their achievements, but the laudatory reception given to them and the scale of adoring coverage afforded by the shooting press cannot mask the fact that British shooting sports should have done better.
Whilst the shooting sports authorities will point to the fact that four of the six strong team made it to their respective finals (a better return than London 2012), the reality is that apart from double trap, our record in every Olympic shooting discipline is abysmal. Air pistol or rifle? Nothing…ever. Rifle shooting? A bronze in 1984 and in 1924 and that’s your lot. Pistol shooting? Zilch. And for those who might point to the handgun ban as an explanation for the latter, it will come as sobering news to hear that pistol shooting has been a feature of the Games since their inception in 1896 and GB has won precisely two medals.
Target shooting may be able to point with some justification, to the less than sympathetic hearing it received when in the past it sought funding for its athletes, but that is a recent and now past phenomenon and can hardly explain why a sport, which engages such large numbers of leisure time participants returns little by way of excellence in sporting achievement. Is there a parallel with tennis? It is a sport which has poured millions into grass roots development but which remains, one player apart, woefully under represented on the world stage. Could it be that both tennis and shooting, often unfairly categorised as middle class pursuits, for this reason simply do not attract the sort of recruits who can perform at the highest level?
Mindful of this and whilst not seeking in any way to diminish the personal success of Ling and Scott, it might be incumbent upon the UK’s shooting sports to look at the Rio games more as a failure than a success and use this as jumping off point to put Britain’s future shooting performances more on par with those of cycling and sailing.