Getting the message out there...

One of the things that the ultra trail running community does so well is showing the beauty and difficulty of their sport through social media. YouTube channels like The Ginger Runner and Billy Yang Films produce exciting and often inspiring videos about running and runners; sometimes about the elite of the sport but occasionally talking about midpackers like me.

By way of contrast, it's probably fair to say that shooting has a bit of an image problem; in the UK it's rare that we get any kind of positive coverage in mainstream media despite the Great Britain Rifle Team's numerous successes at World Championship and Commonwealth level. Fullbore is also not an Olympic sport and relationships with the ISSF disciplines can be strained and dismissive at times. The lack of public awareness of our sport is reinforced by an unsympathetic media and dubious briefings and policies released by police and civil service authorities; it can be a little difficult to be positive about the future of our sport.

Bearing this in mind, it is absolutely fantastic to see the recent series of videos being made by the GB rifle team and released on their Facebook page. Parag, Kelvin, Matty and everyone else are doing a great job of showing our sport in a positive light; and I look forward to seeing more footage from the tour in the coming weeks.

Holy Protea Match Batman!

Captain of the 2017 GB Rifle Team Tour to South Africa Nick Tremlett has just released his team selection and it is a doozy. The sheer strength in depth is astonishing and if anything, it is even stronger than this year's Palma Team with several notable members who were absent from Jane Messer's World Championship-winning team for personal or professional reasons.

Of course, this is no bad thing. The international team match down in Bloemfontein is the Protea Match, which is notoriously hard for outside teams to win (the last being Steve Thomas' 2008 GB Rifle Team if I remember correctly) given the ability of the home side to field the best shooters from widest possible selection and the fickle winds of the General de Wet range.

Some stats for the terminally-geeky:

• Every single team member except the one new cap has been on a Palma Tour
• All but two of the team have been a World Team Champion at least once, with some members of the team having racked up as many as 6 Palma Match Gold Medals
• The new cap is a World Under 25 Team Champion
• Four Palma Match-winning coaches have been selected
• Three team members have won individual Palma or Target Rifle World Championships

The team can been seen on the NRA website here.

Addendum: I am delighted to see that the captain has also been farsighted enough to extend the idea of a training squad to non-touring individuals. I firmly believe that the GB Palma Team's training programme, which forms part of the team selection process, has been a keystone of the team's continued success; and something to which I owe no small debt for the improvement in my shooting over the past decade.