This Is Guernsey

50 UP: Jersey shooter Dave Ward reached his half-century of medals in Rhodes.

I LIKE the idea of a Guernseyman plotting Jersey’s downfall on the sports field.
It seems just a natural thing to do, doesn’t it?
I dare say Eric Legg would be 100% adamant he does not have it in for Jersey, but the respected sports administrator, who now sits on the International Island Games Association as its treasurer, is chairing a working party looking into various disciplines within Island Games sports and will be making a presentation to the IIGA executive committee in Aland next week.
Shooting, and more precisely the curbing of its growth within the biennial Games, is understood to be most vulnerable under any competition review. And not before time.
Jersey topped the medals table in Rhodes on the back of the ridiculously high proportion of medals available to shooting and I would like to think 100% fair Guernsey would be backing changes even if it was Hitra winning all the shooting medals and not the crapauds.
It is interesting to see how shooting has developed within the Games over the last decade.
Prior to the Jersey Games in 1997, all shooting events took place under the International Federation (UIT now the ISSF) rules of competition and there were 12 disciplines.
The average number of member islands competing in the shooting events over the six Games prior to the Jersey one, never exceeded 10.
Since 1997 and including that one, the figure of competing islands has not increased for shooting and competitor numbers are about the same.
But while there were 21 shooting disciplines in Jersey 11 years ago, each one was supported by a pairs [team] competition which meant 42 sets of medals were in the shooters’ sights.
Too many?
Not enough, some thought.
Jerseyman Derek Bernard,
former chairman of the Jersey IGA and leader of its shooting fraternity, blazed a path for expansion with non-UIT events to be included.
The total number of events rose to 28.
Double that with the pairs medals and suddenly you have 56 sets of golds, silvers and bronzes to be presented, without any specifically for women.
Of course, the travesty of it all is compounded by the fact that cycling, a core Island Games sport for so long, is not even being contested in Aland and the team sport with the biggest number of competitors – football – yields just two sets of gold, silver and bronze.
If it is fair for shooting to have so many medals available, then why not provide a set of medals for each of the rounds of golf played as well as the top three in terms of fairways hit, and the players with the best putting stats?
For that matter why not medals for the most handsome caddies?

Article posted on 21st June, 2008 - 11.44am