Clay pigeon shooting...

[screenman]

Rich p, just my thoughts.

 

[Fnaar]

Where's that from fnaar? It looks vaguely familiar.

Sadly, I ate significantly into my work time to google "a pigeon made of clay". It took a while, I can tell you!!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Sadly, I ate significantly into my work time to google "a pigeon made of clay". It took a while, I can tell you!!

It's no wonder the country's in recession!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Perhaps one reason why Sir Jackie Stewart is good at it too - he was international standard.

Wiki tells it thus:
"At the age of 13 he had won a clay pigeon shooting competition and then went on to become a prize winning member of the Scottish shooting team, competing in the United Kingdom and abroad. He won the British, Welsh and Scottish skeet shooting championships and the 'Coupe des Nations' European championship. He also competed for a place in the British trap shooting team for the 1960 Summer Olympics, which was awarded to another competitor named Joe Wheater."

The jammy git, I like him even less now!

He only took it up because he had a bad snowboarding fall and injured his shoulder.

I obviously misheard that bit when it was mentioned as he won.

I was wondering how much damage a snowballing accident could really do!

But Im just trying to reiterate that the great paradox of the Olympics is that seldom does the layman appreciate what he is witnessing!

Apply also what you said to Curling and Rowing.

Much as people slag off curling, there are a LOT of things you need to master just to get a seamless fluid motion when it comes to the sliding delivery, and that's only the start of it!
But all people see are the brushes and laugh

 

[GordonB]

I used to shoot clays regularly but frankly I was bloody useless at it, could have been president of the clay pigeon preservation society. Then I realised it's really a bat and ball game because you are trying to hit a moving object with another moving object and I've always been hopeless at that sort of game as I think too much about it. Took up pistol shooting which requires complete concentration on repetition and got quite good at that, won a couple of county championships. When pistols were largely banned (not completely banned, whatever the press may say) I took up archery which, as stated by another poster, is a complex game of real concentration. I had a good deal of success with that, at least by my standards, won the Northumberland county compound trophy, silver in the Essex indoor, just missed the cut in the Indoor Nationals (still reckon that was my best ever shoot, 60 arrows, all in the gold), did well at some more local shoots. I was intending to concentrate on achieving Grand Master status when I developed frozen shoulder after trying to reach back for my laptop bag in the car. Never recovered the steadiness required so had to give archery up, still can't draw a 60 pound compound comfortably :-(

What all of that did was engender complete respect for anyone who excels at sport because I know exactly how much hard work goes into it.

 

[Risex4]

All I'll say to that GordonB is Compound is cheating!

Although take that from a guy who binned a fairly average recurve career to go off running around the woods with a longbow. And occassional AFB.

 

[GordonB]

All I'll say to that GordonB is Compound is cheating!

Although take that from a guy who binned a fairly average recurve career to go off running around the woods with a longbow. And occassional AFB.

Bollox! The indoor compound 10 ring is half the diameter of the recurve one! For the 18m target that gives a compound 10 ring of 2cm diameter, which is pretty darned small. Provided you're shooting against other compound archers it's an even contest, but at the Northumberland county champs I shot next to a longbow archer and he was having difficulty hitting the boss at 100 and 80 yards, let alone getting a decent score. Look very dispiriting to me and he was clearly not enjoying himself much. I can see some attraction to longbow or flat bow, but they aren't much fun at 100 yards so far as I can see.

 

[Risex4]

Jeez. Shooting a longbow at 100 yards is near as damn it a clout shoot anyway! A guy I used to shoot with who was decent with the longbow (the guy who actually got me to switch) used to class a full end simply in the boss at anything over 80 yards as "phenominal grouping"

But, thats the fun. Hitting the gold everytime is boring. 9, 3, 1, 1, Flag pole, Rear Leg; thats proper archer's scoring Or, more properly, where longbows really belong; 3 for 4...

All joking aside, I never had the full level of patience required for the technical side of archery which high end recruve or compound required. I much preferred the more intuitive side of using a rubber band/pile/ knuckle/guess work. And the look of disgust on you serious archers' faces when I managed to pull out the odd 6-gold end!

 

[ianrauk]

I watched the Italian lady win Gold in the shooting. 99/100 hits. Amazing skill.