On the 21st December 2017 Birmingham was officially announced as the host city for the 2022 Commonwealth Games following the decision in March by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) that Durban failed to meet the criteria it had set.
While this means the Commonwealth Games will once again be held on British shores, shooting was not listed in the sports submitted by the Birmingham bid which raised obvious concerns for STS and its members.
STS has spent the last 12 months lobbying for the inclusion of shooting, first in Durban prior to the decision made by the CGF, then in the bids being submitted by UK cities looking to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games and is committed to continue to lobby for the inclusion of shooting in Birmingham.
STS was one of the first shooting bodies to react to lobby for the inclusion of shooting, first in Durban and then in the recent bids being prepared by UK cities, writing to the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland (CGCS) and working in partnership with British Shooting to lobby the ISSF and other shooting organisations in the Commonwealth. The result of this action led to the meeting of the Commonwealth shooting bodies at the Commonwealth Shooting Federation Championships in November 2017.
Shooting, despite being categorised as an optional sport by the CGF for the Commonwealth Games, has been involved in every Commonwealth Games since 1966, with the one exception of 1970. It is a sport that truly embodies the spirit of the Commonwealth Games through its inclusivity, reflected by the high number of Commonwealth nations able to participate across the 70 Commonwealth nations and territories. Without shooting, many of the smaller nations would not be represented or have the opportunity to compete for a medal. While for larger nations such as Australia, India, England, Canada and Scotland, shooting is a sport in which they have a rich history of success and so would equally be impacted if it were to be removed from the Games.
STS would like to assure its members that we are well aware of this challenge and the impact it could have on our sport from grassroots to performance if it is not included in Birmingham 2022. We will continue to make the case for the inclusion of shooting in the Commonwealth Games, working with our partners at British Shooting to lobby ISSF and our allies in other Home Nation and Commonwealth Nation shooting bodies to lobby the CGF.