Congratulations to all the Olympic airgun competitors.

Congratulations to all of the Olympic airgun competitors thus far. Here's the latest on how the USA Shooting Team stacked up in Paris.

 
@Airgun-hobbyist I’m not sure how the rankings work, but I thought the Olympics were 3rd place or better competitive events. I don’t see how 4th, 13th, 18th, 24th, 32nd and 34th places are “top finishes.” Am I missing something?
My guess that is how the writer or editor of the article called it for publication, making the best light of where the USA team ranked. The USA team's top finisher was in "X place"
 
I have been watching. My wife and I got up at 2:AM this morning to watch the women’s 10M air final. The way it works in the rifle sports, and 10M air pistol (not sure about 25M rapid fire pistol or shotgun sports) Is all the shooters shoot a qualification match. The top 8 make it to finals. Everyone else is done. The top 8 shoot the final match to make the podium. The top 3 in the finals make the podium and get the medal. It’s been a rough start. Out of 10M rifle, 10M pistol Both men’s and women’s only Sagen Maddalena made finals in women’s 10M air. She came in 4th this morning. It has been a disappointment so far as we have/had a good team this year. It’s just a tough sport and you have to be 100% on when the match starts. 3P smallbore starts in a couple days. We are good at it so hoping for the best.
 
I will follow up on what I posted to make it a little more clear. Thru out the year there are many ISSF events. Each country sends their best. Based on how each country does in all the world championship matches determines how many shooters a county can send to the Olympics. In our case, USA, we were able to send 2 men and 2 women for 10M Air Rifle. USA Shooting Sorts goes thru a long process over many matches to determine who represents the USA at the Olympics. So after all that we send shooters to the Olympics. That just gets them there to be able to qualify for the finals which is the real match that determines who gets gold. All the countries that were good enough to have shooters at the Olympics have to shoot the qualifying match at the Olympics. After the qualifying match is shot the top 8 make it to finals. If you aren’t in the top 8 it’s over. The top 8 shoot finals and have the chance for a podium. We had some top 10M shooters there, all capable of winning the gold. It just takes one or two shots to keep you from making the top 8. The competition is tough and you have to be on all cylinders at that exact moment. Everybody there is really good. It’s just a matter of who is having a good day on that particular day. And it only happens every 4 years.
 
Not overly impressive to other top Olympic shooters but our USA team members would shoot circles around 99.99% of AGN shooters if we were to try shooting in their Olympic disciplines.

Also I bet some of those other countries literally bring up career shooters from a young age and it becomes their full time job throughout their life eventually becoming coaches as they age out.
Then likely failure means punishment and scorn for them while success means continuing a nicer lifestyle with benefits.
 
Not overly impressive to other top Olympic shooters but our USA team members would shoot circles around 99.99% of AGN shooters if we were to try shooting in their Olympic disciplines.

Also I bet some of those other countries literally bring up career shooters from a young age and it becomes their full time job throughout their life eventually becoming coaches as they age out.
Then likely failure means punishment and scorn for them while success means continuing a nicer lifestyle with benefits.
Well, it's the Olimpics, these people don't do it for fun and they are definitely professional shooters and started very young with grueling and long training sessions.
I think it's just USA don't take too seriously 10 meter precision like other sports in part because it's hard to sell. It doesn't look good in a TV (insert joke about americans here).
Think of Usain Bolt, it's a professional runner and nobody cares. It's just a more popular and profitable sport.
 
@Airgun-hobbyist I’m not sure how the rankings work, but I thought the Olympics were 3rd place or better competitive events. I don’t see how 4th, 13th, 18th, 24th, 32nd and 34th places are “top finishes.” Am I missing something?

Didn't you know? They're all winners. Watch the opening ceremonies again, that's the first clue. ;)
 
A propagandist is successful when they reinforce the beliefs of their patrons.

Compare Ms Nelson's " USA Earns Top Finish", which should have read " USA Earns Top Finish of 4th Place" - with the Washington Posts' propaganda on the Chinese male who actually won the Men's 10 Meter Air Rifle Gold.

The team of WP propagandists that wrote the WP article ended it with " but...I prefer to stay far away from shooting weapons."

The WP propaganda team was emulating an imbecilic cartoon character the WP created for the Olympics in order to communicate with their patrons at the same intellectual level.
 
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Another quote from low quality toilet paper, that calls itself the "Washington Post" :

"There was no confirming boom from the crowd; there were just tentative claps from the handful of her Chinese teammates in the seats and finally raised arms from her coach. Yang shrugged. She smiled. The first medal of the silent Olympics would not be won with anything more than demure delight.
Shooting is never one of the best-attended of Olympic events. This shooting venue is tucked off in the city’s distant suburbs, along a tiny lane, far from the cries of protest that trickled through the previous night’s Opening Ceremonies. The women’s 10-meter air rifle is about as quiet an event as you can find, even in regular times. All of which made the new, socially distant, spectator-less normal seem not all that new or abnormal."
 
Another quote from low quality toilet paper, that calls itself the "Washington Post" :

"There was no confirming boom from the crowd; there were just tentative claps from the handful of her Chinese teammates in the seats and finally raised arms from her coach. Yang shrugged. She smiled. The first medal of the silent Olympics would not be won with anything more than demure delight.
Shooting is never one of the best-attended of Olympic events. This shooting venue is tucked off in the city’s distant suburbs, along a tiny lane, far from the cries of protest that trickled through the previous night’s Opening Ceremonies. The women’s 10-meter air rifle is about as quiet an event as you can find, even in regular times. All of which made the new, socially distant, spectator-less normal seem not all that new or abnormal."
Actually, this is a nice piece of well crafted propaganda. The propagandist knew the ignorance and prejudices of their patrons very, very, well and reinforced them nicely.

When the propagandist could not report that the competitors were uneducated, undisciplined, undesirables, the propagandist went immediately to the lack of spectators and protesters in order to reinforce their patron's prejudices that:

1. The WP does not support shooting sports.

And

2. Shooting sports are dying.