The Para Trap discipline has made some significant progress over recent years but the IPC announced on Sunday 28th January the sports and disciplines that will go through to the next phase of the process. Para Trap shooting was sadly not among them, with the rationale being that it is not widely and regularly practiced in 32 countries, the minimum number required for individual sports and disciplines to be considered for Paralympic Games inclusion focusing on Paris 2024. In addition, the discipline has no quadrennial competition programme in place.
Steps have already been taken to address these issues with the first combined rifle, pistol and shotgun World Cup due to take place in the UAE in March this year.
Despite this set back, this will not deter the desire of Scottish Target Shooting in pushing inclusive shooting domestically in Scotland across our events, projects and courses. We will be working with our disciplines, through the AMGs, and programmes to work towards making them fully inclusive. We are also making progress with Scottish Disability Sport to improve the support we can offer to clubs and to help signpost athletes with a disability into shooting.
Beyond Scotland, we will work with our partners at British Shooting to push an inclusive shooting agenda internationally in a bid to grow para shooting and increase the number of events included at the Paralympic and Commonwealth Games.