Winter 2002 - National Rifle Association

BBCBBC WRONG TO TURN BACKON SHOOTINGSTARSby Kate HoeyThe Daily Telegraph, Monday 12 August 2002Kate Hoey MP pictured at Bisley during the Commonwealth Games(Photo: John Knight)As the debate continues over if, when and where thiscountry might host the Olympic Games, one piece ofthe jigsaw is already in place. The National ShootingCentre at Bisley, Surrey, would be the venue for allshooting events whether the games were awarded toLondon or Manchester.The home of shooting since 1890, it has had £6 millionof Lottery money invested over the past two years andis now a state-of-the-art centre for all the shootingdisciplines. The new clay ranges are first-class andthe recently opened Lord Roberts Block has the finestpistol ranges in the world, as well as media andcorporate facilities to match anything at the SydneyOlympics.It was a superb venue for the Commonwealth Gamesshooting events. However, unless you were luckyenough to be there you wouldn’t know any of this -that is if you relied on the BBC. Their coverage ofshooting was scandalous.Blink and you probably missed it. The 70 BBCaccreditedstaff at Bisley were dedicated to their job.It wasn’t their fault that the footage used on air wasscant. The nightly three-hour review of the day barelymentioned the sport and yet it was among our mostsuccessful.Of course shooting sports are difficult for television,even though the exploding coloured clays now maketrap events visually easier. Not that this preventedAustralia, Canada and New Zealand from havingmaximum television coverage, or India showing thefinals live. At the very least the BBC could havecovered the medal ceremonies of the British winners.Shooting had the third-largest number of competitorsoverall at the Games, just behind swimming andathletics. England’s team of 37 did well, winning 18medals, five of them gold.Whoever took the editorial decision to minimise thecoverage needs to explain why they did so. Why wasthere no interview with the Games’ youngest goldmedallist, 15-year-old Charlotte Kerwood, whotriumphed in the women’s double trap?It was particularly shameful that Mick Gault’s threegold medals were not given more exposure. Here is asportsman who has now won eight Commonwealthgold medals and, at 48, is a legend in pistol shooting.Gault has never been invited to the BBC’s SportsReview of the Year, nor has he had any recognition inthe Honours List for his many years of winning goldagainst the best in the world.I felt privileged to watch him win the 50 metres pistolsingles - but as Land of Hope and Glory rang out, Iwas not alone in feeling angry at the shabby way wehave treated decent men and women who had theirsport taken from them by the l997 Firearms Act.Since then the pistol shooters of England, Scotland andWales have been unable to fire a single round and havehad to go abroad to train and compete. Yet the HomeOffice exemption meant that the very same activitytook place safely for the two weeks of the Games.So a sport which is illegal in this country, ostensiblyon grounds of public safety, became temporarily legalbecause without shooting being offered Manchesterwould not have been eligible to host the Games. In1997 some of us argued in Parliament for exemptions65