Top picture is silver medalist Thomas Paine from the 1896 Summer games, the first year with a shooting competition. Bottom is gold medalist Vitalina Batsarashkina from the 2020 games.
https://www.ssusa.org/content/athens-1896-olympics-the-first-shots-for-record/
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I’d say this is a good example of letting materials science go overboard and destroy the spirit of the sport.
Could also argue the more precise the machine the better it tests the coordination of the human
You could also argue that reducing the need to dynamically compensate for the variance of a more traditional firearm is a key part of the coordination.
You could indeed. Practical shooting competitions are more interesting.
Today, they use the most precise guns that are available with current tech.
Back then, they did the same.
That’s cool and all, but it makes breaking records pointless. There needs to be clear delineation between equipment changes and world records.
You could argue the same for improved nutrition and training methods today’s athletes have access to.
There are sports contests using vintage equipment, but the public interest in them is much lower. Most people enjoy watching numbers go up every year.
There should definitely be delineation between the eras when PEDs became commonly available. We all know that just about every professional athlete uses PEDs at one point or another. On that subject, a billionaire bought the record setting home run ball hit by Barry Bonds, had an asterisk laser engraved into it, and then donated it to the MLB hall of fame. LOL, total Chad move.
This is just a very specific tangent. It is obviously different than the baseline shooting experience. It would be difficult to mistake this kind of target shooting for anything resembling practical shooting. That’s alright. It can exist as its own thing.