Annual review 2020

What a crazy 2020 it was, in everyday work, in private life and also in sport. The corona pandemic has mixed up a lot and numerous usual events had to be canceled. There have been serious changes in our hobby, sport shooting, but with all the negative things there are also a few positive changes. With the training and long-distance competition website www.pistolentraining.de and later www.pistolenliga.de something completely new for air pistol sport shooters emerged out of necessity.

How it all started

We were still happy that Vanessa Seeger from our national squad won the junior European air pistol championship, because the corona madness in shooting sports began for me on March 1, 2020. I received the message through our regional cadre group that a positive corona case had occurred at a shooting club in the Hanover region. Since my junior shooters in the state squad also trained together with shooters from the club concerned, there was an alarm mood and great excitement. Training camps were canceled and competitions canceled and I had the idea to keep the training group together through long-distance competitions. On March 22, 2020, I asked our national trainer what he thought of the idea. In principle, the idea was well received, but our shooting houses were closed due to the coronavirus and thus our young talents could no longer practice shooting. My suggestion to organize long-distance competitions for the marksmen who have home shooting ranges or training facilities was examined and on April 15, 2020 I received the message that something like this could not be implemented together with the association. But the idea was born and while the association was relying on fitness videos and sports exercises, I wanted to continue making shooting sports possible. Four days later, the training platform www.pistolentraining.de started on April 19, 2020 and I wrote to well-known marksmen, trainers and clubs and presented my online offer.

Long distance competitions

The first long-distance competition then took place on May 1st, 2020. 18 sports fans had registered and 14 could take part in the air pistol competition. Jascha Schultz from friend SV Schwitschen was the first winner with 574 rings. Participant registrations increased and as a test before the first big tournament, whether the results were transmitted via the website, the “Whitsun Pre-Event” was quickly announced. The first international sport shooters from Portugal, France and Ireland took part here. The “Whitsun Tournament” was the third long-distance competition from May 29th - 30th, 2020 and 33 participants entered the results lists, 47 interested athletes had registered within a month and were enthusiastic about the idea. 9 more tournaments followed in the course of the year and this special sporting year ended with the 12th long-distance competition between Christmas and New Year's Eve. 199 marksmen and shooting enthusiasts have registered on www.pistolentraining.de by the end of the year, 167 athletes have taken part in the individual competitions.

Team league

In addition to the individual competitions, team competitions also started on www.pistolenliga.de from July 2020. The first heavy corona wave was over and the lower number of corona infections gave rise to hope that the league competitions in the German Shooting Federation, the state associations or at district level will start again in autumn. In preparation for the new team season (also for my teammates), I developed the team league format and sent out an invitation to a team competition on June 28, 2020. In my planning I was hoping for 8 or 12 participating teams, but soon had more than 16 club registrations. At the end of the registration period, I had 32 team registrations and instead of one league I even had to set up two online team leagues. Teams from France, Portugal and Spain had also registered. If the inquiries that reached me at the start of the 1st qualification competition had been received a little earlier, it would have been enough for 3 team leagues. After two qualifying competitions and the subsequent league start on August 31, 2020, the three team duels were carried out in the group phase. The semi-finals of the 16 best teams in the 1st and 2nd league followed until the second wave of the corona pandemic prevented the semifinals and finals from being held. The club houses have been closed again in many German federal states and so the league final has to pause. 132 air pistol shooters from 32 clubs took part in the team league competitions.

Trainingsbuch

When the rifle houses had to stop shooting for the first time, I received several requests for more long-distance competitions. There were (and are) numerous sport shooters who have their own 10 meter shooting range at home or who can practice shooting sports over shorter distances using electronic "trainers". From this group arose the desire to practice shooting sports more often with like-minded people. Since I didn't want to advertise competitions every 2 weeks, the training book was created. Here sport shooters were able to report their training results as often as they wanted over a period of 4 weeks and at the end of the month I created an evaluation with the best performances and the number of activities. After the summer holidays, however, participation decreased, which is certainly due to the fact that the shooting houses were open again and shooting takes place most beautifully in club life and not on a website. This is also a nice transition to the things that unfortunately didn't work that well.

Not everything worked out

“Sports shooters want to shoot and not fitness training”, with this realization the attempt to offer an alternative to shooting sports with coordination exercises, strength and muscle training as well as why-up, workout, fitness and stretching exercises ended. A good basic physical constellation and sporting activities are also part of successful shooting sports, but in my experience it is not accepted as a replacement for the weekly club training in the shooting range. I put the greatest amount of time into the development of my training website www.pistolentraining.de in the area of "fitness". Together with my son, who is studying "Medical Sport and Health Management", I looked for exercises for marksmen, designed a web-based training book and also a fitness competition. The reaction to this offer was minimal and in retrospect I have to sum up that sports shooters prefer to stand in front of the targets with a rifle or pistol.

I also see the topic of “youth shooting sports” as a failure. After I received such good support in the adult area with long-distance competitions, I wanted to offer this opportunity to young people and juniors as well, and so a separate youth long-distance competition area was created. In order to make the program known, I looked for the clubs from the results lists of the German championships that had been very successful in the student or youth class in the past 2 years or that showed good young talent by participating with several shooters. After the first Cornawelle had subsided and the rifle houses opened again, I wrote to 85 clubs an invitation for my youth program on June 1st, 2020. The first tentative feedback made it possible to hold a junior long-distance competition, but only a few clubs took part in the initial registrations. Before the summer holidays, the second long-distance competition was well attended with 21 participants in the schoolchildren, youth and junior classes, but after the summer holidays the willingness to participate completely collapsed so that I unfortunately had to end the youth project on September 30, 2020.

Conclusion

From my point of view, the "Long Distance Competitions" project was and is a great success that was fun and will continue in 2021. If I take the individual and team competitions together, I was able to get 239 air pistol marksmen to participate. Some started in the individual competitions as well as in the team competitions and interested athletes from 22 nations registered. The voluntary work brought me great acquaintances with athletes that I would otherwise never have got to know, the foreign club representatives and marksmen such as Jorge Rego from Portugal, Gemma Martinez from Spain, Daniel Goberville from France, as well as in Germany, are representative of the many new friendships the very active club representatives like Cordula Mühlig from Leipzig, Regina Dusch from the SG Ulrichshögl, Christian Lichtenegger from Würzburg, Andre Rudolf from Rostock or from the youth division Ralph Wietfeldt from the Büdinger SG.

No sport annual review without the highlights of the year, here is an evaluation of the most active participants and the best shooting results:

Most of the participation in the individual competitions

Name nation participations

Axel Pralle GER - Germany 12

Remo Clemens GER - Germany 11

Thomas Kröger GER - Germany 11

Mario Meyer GER - Germany 10

Wilfried Dörschlen GER - Germany 10

Aurore Goberville FRA - France 9

Jascha Schulz GER - Germany 9

Ramon Suarez         ESP - Spain              8