News Olympic pistol hopeful forced abroad to train
Geraldine takes aim with her .22 pistol, which is banned in Great Britain.
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A young hopeful's dream of becoming an olympic champion could be crushed because of a strict British law on handguns.
Geraldine Buckley (18), from Cowick, has recently been to Switzerland in order to practise pistol shooting because the use of .22 pistols is banned in this country following the Dunblane tragedy.
Geraldine, who won the British Junior Championships last year and is on the British Shooting Pathway on the 'talent level' at present, is therefore unable to practise as much as she needs to get her standard high enough for the Olympics.
Amongst other competitions, Geraldine has won a silver and bronze medal at the Intershoot competition in Holland in February this year, as well as a gold team medal at the Nordic Championships in Denmark in September last year. She was also selected to go into the European Championships in March, 2007 and she has two British records.
Geraldine trains for between 20 and 25 hours a week with a combination of shooting and tough physical exercise.
She told the Goole Times: "Shooting requires a lot of stamina and endurance. Shooting a 60-shot sport pistol match with a .22 pistol is the same as shovelling five tonnes of soil.
"I also swim a lot and do a lot of physical exercise and strength training to develop my match fitness. You also have to have very good balance, so I do a lot of core stability work."
She added: "We are unable to train with .22 pistols as they are banned in Great Britain. So therefore we have to train in Switzerland - as often as we can. This puts us at a great disadvantage compared with competitors from other countries, who can train every day.
"It is outrageous that we are hosting the Olympic Games and handguns are banned here. Unless we have a special dispensation from the government so that we can train at home, then our chances of winning medals are very slim."
Geraldine has to train at home using an air pistol. She said: "An air pistol is entirely different to a .22 pistol as there is no recoil and the weight of the gun and the trigger weight are incredibly different. One analogy that has been used is that it's the same as making Tim Henman train with a badminton racket all year then compete at Wimbledon with a tennis racket."
The Training Performance Director for Great Britain Shooting is working with the Home Office and looking into a solution for the situation.
Published on 16th August 2007 in News.
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