Henri Junghänel, Olympic winner in prone Rio 2016, member of the ISSF Athletes' Committee, just posted:
So after my post of the IOC/ISSF meeting protocol in April I had a conversation with the Secretary General at WC Rio where he was obviously not amused about the post, yet it was a friendly conversation. He emphasized that the letter was taken out of context and didn't mean anything. Further in the meeting, on my request for transparency he said that everything should be announced at its right time.
Well, half a year later exactly what was written in the paper came true (even if not finally decided until mid of next year) and if I would have known that decisions have been made already, I wouldn't have paused my vacation and could have saved my federation 1200 € in costs for the flight from Buenos Aires to Munich and back.
Nevertheless out of the prospective of a -soon to be ex- member of the Athletes committee I'm really disappointed about the desicion for several reasons. I think the most valid was named by Jonas about prone being the most-shot event in several countries. A third olympic event in air rifle (the same applies to air pistol) won't increase the number of shooters around the world by a single shooter. The removal of prone, however, will most certainly do the opposite.
First, I have to state that I don't have any personal problems with the decision. I have achieved more than I have hoped for and was thinking about a career-end anyway, in order to focus on my professional career as an engineer.
Second, I have to defend the ISSF decision that an extra event in each discipline (bumping it up from 3x5 to 3x6) is not possible in times where other sports are just higher on the entry list for the Olympics as new shooting events. I believe that the IOC is the driving force of not creating open events. So mixed team events are a logical conclusion even if I don't really understand why the parity 5 rifle, 5 pistol, 5 shotgun is untouchable.
Supposedly, the IOC is really in favor of the idea of mixed air events. With this we get to the main problem we have with shooting in the Olympic circle. In detail, there are three major points:
- The IOC doesn't like shooting (and would prefer something without guns) and there hasn't been a single written paper on what they want to change except from the Agenda 2020
- The ISSF isn't able to promote our sport that it can be financially independent from IOC support, so everything out of the Olympics neither gets any funding on the national level (no matter where you go) nor any sponsorship money
- the highest priority of the ISSF is maintaining as many quota places as possible, so it rather sacrifices prone, free pistol, douple trap than taking a chance because it thinks it's best for the sport.
So unless someone is coming up with a new way to present our sport (other "boring" sports have made that step - golf, darts, snooker) and is willing to invest time and money to establish a new federation, a new world cup series or something equivalent the sport won't grow.
Because, I, personally, am convinced that the ISSF will continue the downsizing (in range and caliber size) until there's not much left of 'our' sport. Rhetorical questions: How many events are left on the Olympic 50m range; why building one?
Furthermore, as Rajmond has pointed out once, with the downsizing they take away the only sponsors a (semi-)professional athlete has.
I hope, I'm wrong with that thinking and it's really for the best for our sport, that the airgun population, as well as the industry behind it will bloom and that the ISSF committees are not the only one who benefit from as much meetings and quotas as possible. However, I feel disappointed with the idea that the main goal of ISSF is to maintain as many quotas as possible and forgetting to represent the interest of its current athletes; as long as it has still members.
But maybe the 4:2 vote within the Athletes committee in favor for mixed air over mixed prone has proven that my opinion is just one of a minority within the population of athletes.
Well, that's just a small part of the whole story.
Side note:
Because of 7 new sports in Tokyo and 800 athletes less, the amount of quotas overall is likely to go down.