Back between 2003 and 2007 I studied physics at university. Last week I had a phone call from someone writing on vision impaired people and physics. You are probably thinking, what has this all to do with shooting? Within the conversation with the journalist he mentioned that he had done a web search and seen that I also do shooting and he asked the question of what would I describe as my best achievement in shooting. This question has come up before when talking with people about VI shooting, so may be it is time to also answer it here on this blog.
I am going to pick three which have particular significance to me, although there are others which also mean something to me.
- Back around the late 1990s and early 2000s the British always had a team go over to the Dutch Open Championships. In 2000 it was my first time in being selected to go with the team and first time I had shot in a competition in another country. It was the biggest thing I had done in shooting at that point and I definitely had nerves. Dispite feeling that pressure, I won the supported competition (standing, shooting from a support rest). Since then I have done things which are a greater achievement, but this probably is where I really started getting that competitive thing in shooting and the hunger to push further.
- Next we jump forward to 2014 and the IPC Shooting VI demonstration event in Suhl in Germany. Whilst the number of shooters participating were only a few, we had all been selected as top VI shooters for the demonstration event, so I was competing against the best. Also we were using unfamiliar equipment as IPC Shooting wanted to run it with the equipment they wanted for the future. The equipment was the EcoAims Biathlon equipment, fortunately things have been tweaked since there to make it better for target shooting and also the plan is to still use actual air rifles. I think the first time I had ever used the system was in the practice the day before competition. So I was really pleased to win that competition and the trophy is one I really value.
- Finally but not least is the first medal I won in the Cambridgeshire postal league competition here in the UK. Why does a UK postal league competition, it was not even the first division, have more significance to me than some of the international achievements and medals? Well this competition is a standard shooting competition against sighted shooters and also using the smaller air rifle target. So due to the number of shooters who take part and also because of the smaller target, I had absolutely no room for silly mistakes and to be able to successfully compete against sighted shooters helped me gain an idea where my shooting is against more than just the VI shooting community.
