THE FIRST shot ever fired as part of the modern Olympics was at the inaugural 1896 Games in Athens in the 200-metre military rifle competition. It wasn't fired by the luxuriantly moustachioed Pantelis Karasevdas, the law student who would go on to take gold, but by the Queen Consort of Greece, Olga Constantinovna; a ceremonial shot to open the proceedings. She would be the only woman to pull a trigger in the Games for 74 years.
Shooting has featured in all but two of the Summer Olympics since that first competition, although some disciplines, such as live pigeon shooting, running deer and 1,000-yard rifle, only made short-lived appearances. (Despite popular myth, duelling has never been featured.) While it was one of the original nine Olympic sports, shooting wouldn't appear in the Paralympic Games until the fifth edition: Toronto 1976. This hasn't stopped Great Britain's Paralympic athletes from rising up the medal table: they currently hold seven golds and 28 in total, fast catching up to Britain's Olympic tally of 13 golds and 47 medals overall.
The sport was also one of 10 to be featured in the first-ever Olympics Esports Week in Singapore last year, where the contest was held on a special island created within the cartoonish video game Fortnite. It was shooting the likes of which Pantelis Karasevdas could have never imagined: picture doing biathlon round a neon, Escher-like landscape dressed as Mr Blobby, and you're some of the way there.
This story is from the July 2024 edition of The Field.
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This story is from the July 2024 edition of The Field.
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