Sport for some

In your country sport is popular. You take pride, as a citizen, of your countries record at world sporting events. You may not follow football, for instance, but nevertheless you are deeply disappointed when your country looses in a European football match against the Germans in a penalty shootout. Then, years later, you scream like an idiot when your country beats Germany 5-1 at the same game. Your team routed Germany in a game you hardly follow and you want to go out and buy the DVD just so you can see it again.

You may not follow rugby, but when your country beats all comers to win a world title you’re ecstatic. Never mind that you’ve never watch the game. This is your country and you’ve beaten the best of the best. How great is that?

You may not follow curling, but when your curling team wins an Olympic gold medal for your country you are filled with pride. You may not know how or why someone would get into a sport like that but you’re sure glad that some of your fellow citizens did. God bless them. What a damn fine moment that was when you watched that gentle push, all that crazy sweeping, and that glorious sound as the oppositions whatchamacallits were knocked out of the way, leaving your country victorious.

You may not follow shooting, but each and every time your Olympic and Commonwealth medal tally is increased by your countries shooting team you’re thankful and proud. You’re thankful and proud that once again your country has brought home the goods, saved from a worse Olympic ranking because of a sport that you know little about. And you know that this sport brings home the medals time and time again.

In your country you have an organisation called Sport England. This organisation decides to draw up a list of ten sports scheduled for prioritised investment and shooting is not one of them. Given its medal tally you wonder why.

the ten priority sports are those in which “the nation wishes to see us do well”.

Interesting, you don’t recall being asked your opinion. You begin to wonder if this is just another one of those ‘it’s what the public wants’ moments. The one’s you’ve had all your life. The ones where the ‘public’ somehow make their desires know using some mechanism that you are neither aware of or involved in. You realise that You’re not the only one wondering.

John Leighton-Dyson, World Class Performance director for the Great Britain Target Shooting Federation, said: “We satisfy all the criteria set out by both bodies and are meeting our performance targets. For Athens, we have earned more Olympic quota places than ever before. We are a sport for young and old, men and women. There are many shooters with disabilities, for whom shooting is their only sporting activity.”

You wonder what Sport England have to say about that.

“We do not consider the sport contributes substantially to our overall objectives.”

You wonder how a sport that England beats all-comers at does not contribute substantially to Sport England’s objectives.

At that point you decide that their objectives have nothing to do with the sporting prowess of your country. You begin to wonder if, in actual fact, they are hopeless.