bbc young sports personality of the year - Skeet Shooter

Gatling

Hope some enjoy the following

16 year old Amber Hill Olympic Skeet gold medalist took home the young sports personality of the year award earlier tonight on BBC 1 ,

Witcher

Well done to her. Not mad about the paintjob on her gun though:pac:

rowa

I am amazed, george digweed has been cleaning up at top level competitions for years now and never won anything from the BBC. He said in one interview he was treated badly at the BBC (the telly version of the guardian newspaper) at any of the sports awards he attended and wouldn't attend again.
Still fair play to her for winning.

tac foley

rowa wrote: »

I am amazed, george digweed has been cleaning up at top level competitions for years now and never won anything from the BBC. He said in one interview he was treated badly at the BBC (the telly version of the guardian newspaper) at any of the sports awards he attended and wouldn't attend again.
Still fair play to her for winning.

George Digweed looks like an overweight Big Foot with a bad haircut. This gal looks like a beauty queen.

Who would YOU pay to see? :P

tac

Sparks

Didn't Mick Gault have similar fun with the BBC and A Question of Sport, who'd asked every other English commonwealth games medalist on as a guest bar him, who had more commonwealth games medals than any other English athlete in any other sport, ever?

If this marks a change to that kind of attitude, it's a brilliant story for two good reasons!

pastense

Young Amber Hill is a skeet shooter, its an Olympic discipline, World class at 16 years old, she deserves recognition. She will be good for all the shooting sports in the future.

Peter Wilson got plenty of publicity when he won Olympic Gold at Double Trap.

Derek Burnett got coverage on RTE in the run up to the Olympics.

George Digweed is a fantastic shotgun shooter with, is it 20 or so World gold medals BUT his discipline is not in the Olympics.

The media put up with shooting in Olympic disciplines and in Olympic years. This is nothing new. There are many Olympic sports that get no coverage in the media except when a potential Star appears.

How did they discover Amber's ability and how did they support her, thats what I'd like to know.

tac foley

It's as well to point out that .22 pistol and air pistol are also Olympic sports, but with the number of shooters in UK these days shooting firearms, the 'pool of shooters' choice is getting VERY small indeed, the recent changes in the law having just about killed ALL competitive firearms handgun shooting stone dead. Air pistol is different, and Micky Gault failed to make the required score put - simple.

As for how youngsters get selected and sponsored, well that is outside me remit to answer, so you'll have to found that one out for yourself, like I will.

tac

Sparks

Good point, but Mick Gault's discipline was also Olympic and he'd have been in the games in London but for a monumentally asshatted decision (but even that's good for the media since it's controversial and apparently we like that more than we like bacon wrapped reality tv stars or something...).

Regardless, still a good story to see and we could hope it means a step towards more acceptance...

Sparks

tac foley wrote: »

Micky Gault failed to make the required score

Er, no, he hit it in FP and was therefore qualified under the rules to shoot in FP or AP. The reason he didn't go wasn't to do with sport, but with asshattery in the admin side.

pastense

tac foley wrote: »

As for how youngsters get selected and sponsored, well that is outside me remit to answer, so you'll have to found that one out for yourself, like I will.

tac

I didn't know I was asking yourself in particular. I wasn't expecting an answer actually, from yourself or anyone else.

It's been a long time, if ever, that a shooter so young and talented has been identified and supported in this country.
Maybe we don't have the facilities or the money.

tac foley

pastense wrote: »

I didn't know I was asking yourself in particular. I wasn't expecting an answer actually, from yourself or anyone else.

Ah, apologies. I naturally assumed [silly of me, I know] that since your post came immediately after mine that you were asking me.

Please let the rest of us know when you find out.

TIA

tac

Sparks

pastense wrote: »

It's been a long time, if ever, that a shooter so young and talented has been identified and supported in this country.
Maybe we don't have the facilities or the money.

She started shooting at age nine. In this country, there are significant legal obstacles to that. There are proscribed ways around them, but the parents would have to (a) know them, (b) follow them, and (c) invest a fair bit of time and money to do so (they're not arcane methods, but they mean all training takes place on a range, and that means time and effort driving junior to the range every day or every other day, all year round). It's not even clear if those loopholes are available to shotgun shooters, and they require that the range itself be onside as well (and some can't be because of insurance or authorisation issues).

Not only that, we don't have that many coaches that are able to work effectively with kids that young. We've done it before, most recently with WTSC's juniors and it's been done in the past with people who've gone on to enjoy a lot of success (Derek Burnett jumps to mind straight away), but it's not the norm here, which means our international shooters have yet another obstacle to overcome, namely that their international competitive peers tend to have four to ten years of training on them.

pastense

There is one young man who has demonstrated an ability in Shotgun and has done for a number of years.
As far as I know, he has competed once in ISSF overseas as a junior and did very well indeed.
I think his family would have to invest serious money for him to pursue this further.
Its a tough one to solve. Spend big money and maybe achieve the results and scores before any funds are sent your way.

Sparks

And the amount of funds available to send your way will never even let you break even, especially in ISSF shotgun. ISSF rifle and pistol are in the same boat, but the running costs are slightly less because the per-shot cost is lower (a lump of inert lead or a .22lr round and a paper target just cost less than a shotgun shell and clay), unless you're talking about the fullbore stuff in which case we're back to being even in costs.

Realistically, if you want to train and compete at world class level in ISSF, you're looking at expending somewhere in the €20,000 to €40,000 range (or more) depending on where the international circuit is being held that year and how much of it you're attending. That's just out of reach for most shooters and the support systems have been broken for as long as they've been around so it's either penury and selecting specific matches and betting all your eggs on those baskets; or not trying.

ps. You'll also have to give up fulltime work because there aren't enough hours in the day to hold down a fulltime job and train at world-class level in ISSF disciplines. So that €20-40k can't be earned in a normal job (unless you're the pension manager for a nonexistent pension fund )

rowa

tac foley wrote: »

George Digweed looks like an overweight Big Foot with a bad haircut. This gal looks like a beauty queen.

Who would YOU pay to see? :P

tac

If it were a beauty show, it'd be her. If it were top level clay shooting , it would be him. Still if its physical appearance the BBC are using to award airtime , then we will probably see jordan With her knockers out on being interviewed by andrew marr about the state of the uk economy or something .

pastense

Sparks wrote: »

And the amount of funds available to send your way will never even let you break even, especially in ISSF shotgun. ISSF rifle and pistol are in the same boat, but the running costs are slightly less because the per-shot cost is lower (a lump of inert lead or a .22lr round and a paper target just cost less than a shotgun shell and clay), unless you're talking about the fullbore stuff in which case we're back to being even in costs.

Realistically, if you want to train and compete at world class level in ISSF, you're looking at expending somewhere in the €20,000 to €40,000 range (or more) depending on where the international circuit is being held that year and how much of it you're attending. That's just out of reach for most shooters and the support systems have been broken for as long as they've been around so it's either penury and selecting specific matches and betting all your eggs on those baskets; or not trying.

ps. You'll also have to give up fulltime work because there aren't enough hours in the day to hold down a fulltime job and train at world-class level in ISSF disciplines. So that €20-40k can't be earned in a normal job (unless you're the pension manager for a nonexistent pension fund )

The same must apply to Athletics and Boxing and other Olympic sports (though without the cost of guns and ammo), suppose its down to Sports council funding and the rules they apply.
Is it only in Shooting that a competitor must travel to World class events and best the best at your own expense or do the all promising Irish Olympic hopefuls with talent have to pay their own way at the outset of their careers.

Sparks

pastense wrote: »

The same must apply to Athletics and Boxing and other Olympic sports (though without the cost of guns and ammo), suppose its down to Sports council funding and the rules they apply.

Not so much. There's more travel and more costs associated with shooting, unless you look at a very few sports like Sailing. And those sports in Ireland tend to be quite large, with a lot of social backing and thus a lot more money floating about.

Is it only in Shooting that a competitor must travel to World class events and best the best at your own expense or do the all promising Irish Olympic hopefuls with talent have to pay their own way at the outset of their careers.

Not just shooting, but shooting seems to have one of the worst deals (if not the worst deal) of all the olympic sports, and that's just on the money front, I'm not even counting the legal fun we have.

pastense

That explains a lot,

Don't understand your 'legal' reference.

Anyway I'm sure the National Governing bodies are doing everything in their power to promote the sport and foster a feeling of goodwill for the sport among the government agencies who could influence funding. Shooting doesn't do well after nutcases shoot kids in schools in the US etc making the job of promoting our sport a tricky one that needs exceptional people.

Sparks

pastense wrote: »

Don't understand your 'legal' reference.

Can't have a licence at all if you're under 14 and it's awkward between 14 and 16; so by the time you can have your own firearm, which is a rather important thing in ISSF as they're fitted to you to one degree or another, the people you'll be competing with will have been shooting for four to six years already. If you're training at this level, you're training all the time, not just for a few hours on the range every weekend. The GB team would be training every day for hours; the Irish team the same. In the runup to the intershoot match, we were training for four to five hours a day every other day on average and that was a small international, not a world cup. You just can't do that with club gear, not properly.

And then there's the point that you wouldn't see a junior basketball team having to get character references to own a ball, and so forth.

Gatling

Peter Wilson another Gb gold medalist and world champion record holder double trap shooter, amazing shooter actually had to find and work a full time job after his Olympic funding was stopped in the run up to the last Olympic's, his training fee's alone come to around 10k that's before any hours is put in ,
His trainer a member of the Dubai royal family part funds his training,

When it comes to funding its never easy