UK proposes seperate CWG shooting event to mitigate India’s concerns

To mitigate India’s concern over the exclusion of shooting at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, Britain has asked the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and British Shooting to consider hosting a separate event for the sport in 2022.

India's protests against the exclusion of shooting from the 2022 CWG had reached a level where it even threatened to boycott the Games over the issue. In a bid to calm the Indian sports administrators down, British sports minister Nigel Adams, has been in contact with “both the Commonwealth Games Federation and British Shooting to see if some common ground could be found on the matter.”

India's Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju had written to his British counterpart on Sept 3 related to the concerns over the exclusion of shooting at the Birmingham CWG. Replying to this, British secretary for digital, culture, media and sports, Nicky Morgan, wrote: “While the decision (to include shooting in CWG) ultimately rests with the Birmingham 2022 Organising Committee and the CGF the government understands the strength of feeling in the matter.”

Morgan’s correspondence to Rijiju further includes that the British Sports Minister has asked the CGF and British Shooting to consider the options of hosting a separate Commonwealth shooting event in the UK in 2022.

“I hope this could provide a means for a shooting event to be held outside of the Commonwealth Games, which will allow Indian shooters to compete in the UK in 2022,” she added.

The UK sports secretary also stated that since shooting was not a core sport under the CGF constitution, and it was not included in the original bid that was accepted by the CGF in 2017, a "fair" and "transparent" review was carried out by the Birmingham Games organisers looking at the possibility of adding additional sports following interests and support from different quarters.

“The review was fair and transparent and conducted as an open tender review process” she wrote, “Key criteria were set, written submission were made to the assessment panel, which consisted of representatives from Birmingham 2022 OC, DCMS, Birmingham City Council and Commonwealth Games England by representatives of each sports. The panel offered the shooting community to explore options for a partial or wholly Birmingham Based option, delivering some disciplines outside of Bisley. However, the International Shooting Federation, the International Confederation of Fullbore Rifle Association and British Shooting decided against submitting a proposal if it could not include all four disciplines at Bisley.”