I own a .22 Springfield/Air Venturi M1A. I've never participated in FT competition, but from what I've read of the discipline, the M1A would not be a good choice. You can mount a scope, but the mount sits so high that even with the highest lace-on cheekpiece, proper cheek-weld isn't possible. The rifle with iron sights only is heavy. Around 9.5 lbs. Half a pound heavier than my real .308 M1A. The scope mount is boat anchor heavy, and then there's your optics.
That being said, the rifle itself is a solid piece that shoots well and is fairly accurate. With 11.9gr RWS Hobby it can put 5 rounds into a sub dime-sized group at 10m with iron sights from a sandbag with a light hold. Velocity with Hobby was around 780fps. Trigger is 2 stage but not adjustable, and breaks at a fairly crisp 3lbs.
This is the only under-lever I've shot or owned, so I have no real comparison, but, the cocking effort feels like cranking my HW50S. Not overly stout, but it does require a bit of effort. I decided that it's best suited as an iron sight only gun. Plinking beer cans offhand at 50yds is no problem, and it hits hard.
I went through the action and did an overall polish and de-burr, and I refinished the stock with Minwax #244 walnut stain followed by a couple of coats of Tru-Oil. If you like the M-14/M1A it's a good airgun replica with roughly the same weight and feel. Put just over 2000 rounds through it, and all is working well so far.
My initial scoped setup-
Now, just iron sights-
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