The Olympic dreams of Gibsons marksman Allan Harding could be blown to dust after a recommendation by the International Sport Shooting Federation (ISSF) to drop one of the most venerable Olympic shooting events from the 2020 Tokyo Games.
The 50m pistol – or free pistol – has been an Olympic staple for more than a century and is considered one of the purest and most challenging precision shooting events in the sport. So why drop it? The International Olympic Committee (IOC) wants “gender equality” in Olympic sports and, in the words of ISSF athletes committee chairman Abhinav Bindra, “shooting currently has nine men’s events and six women’s events on the Olympic program, so major changes are necessary.” It’s all about “complying with Agenda 2020” so that the ISSF can “maintain our strong position within the Olympic Movement,” Bindra said.
Under the ISSF proposal, 50m pistol will be replaced by a mixed gender air pistol event and two other men’s events will be similarly converted. In other words, rather than simply allowing women to compete in the more challenging shooting events, the ISSF is looking at doing away with the events altogether and lowering the bar to ensure gender parity is achieved as part of “Agenda 2020.”
The recommendation has triggered a Change.org petition and outraged free pistol shooters around the world. In an article last month, The Indian Express noted the 50m pistol is “physically and mentally draining but women used to shoot it 100 years ago, and there’s no reason they won’t be able to take up the intellectual challenge.” Rio Olympian Prakash Nanjappa is quoted: “With a paired event in air pistol, there’s no new challenge for women, just another token addition of medal in an event they’re anyways shooting. Let’s add women to free pistol instead, if we want to raise the bar and strike parity.”
For Allan Harding, who was named 50m National Champion last summer at the Canadian National Pistol Championships in Toronto, the removal of 50m pistol from the Olympics will be a massive setback. As he said after winning four gold medals at the Nationals: “For so long I was only focused on the 10m event, but this year all I’ve been shooting is 50m internationally. … Tokyo 2020, that’s my goal. I think about that every day now.”
The ISSF’s plan smacks of an “easy win” mentality, no doubt pushed by the IOC in order to enhance TV viewership. It is an insult to the men who have mastered the discipline and women who, in the eyes of the governing body, are apparently not capable of doing so.
