How hard is Olympics Shooting?
Shooting sports have been in the lime light lately thanks to this based dude from Turkey taking silver in 10m air pistol with minimal equipment, looking like he just rolled out of bed. Hes the one Olympian that looks like the rest of us. He makes it look easy, so do you think you could do it? I definitely wanted to know, so my buddy and I headed to the range yesterday to find out.
Now, I’m no stranger to shooting sports. I regularly shooting action pistol in local club matches modeled after the USPSA or IPSC matches. Action or Dynamic pistol involves running around shooting targets as quickly and as accurately as possible. Scoring is a combination of accuracy and time spent. Action pistol is actually extremely popular all around the world and I hope that one day it’ll make its way to the Olympics. So while I like to compete in action pistol, it is very different from Olympics shooting.
In my opinion, 25m rapid pistol is the most exciting olympics shooting sport
Olympics sport shooting is tied to the International Shooting Sports Foundation. There are multiple shooting disciplines, but the one making the headlines lately has been 10m air pistol, due to this legend capturing the hearts of fans with his chill vibes and simple gear. Air pistol is more about precision marksmanship than it is about speed, so it’s completely different than dynamic shooting like USPSA.
The event that I think is the most interesting however, is 25m rapid pistol. In part because the event use actual firearms chambered in 22LR and because the sport combines marksmanship and speed.
How 25m Rapid Pistol Works
Competitors shoot one handed for 5 rounds in fast succession, 1 shot each into 5 targets at 25 meters. They have 4 seconds to do it. This is done in 8 sets for 40 rounds total fired. If a competitor goes over those times, any shots after do not count.
Each target is a 50CM circle. Targets are considered either hit or miss. The innermost 9.7CM of the target is considered a hit, anything outside is a miss.
Attempting to shoot 25m rapid pistol
To replicate this we headed over to the local range. Our range is a bit limited in that we were confined to a single lane and the range doesn’t go out to 25 meters. Instead, I had these 8″ target pasters. The 8 inch targets at 10 yards are roughly the same size as the 55cm Olympics targets at 25 meters. So anyone can try this out with a pack of 8 inch stickers from Walmart at any indoor range practically. If you try it, post a video and tag our channel, we’d love to see you guys run the drill.
Since we were stuck in a single lane, we also had to stack the targets vertically whereas this sport is usually shot horizontally.
Additionally, we shot it with my Taurus TX22 competition model equipped with a red dot. Only iron sights are allowed in the Olympics.
So it wasn’t exactly the same but hey, it’s in the spirit of the Olympics and we aren’t exactly Olympic shooters. So even with these advantages how hard was it for just a regular gun guy?
How did we perform?
It was insanely fun but incredibly challenging. Most of us shoot 2 handed in dynamic pistol unless a stage calls for one handed shooting. So shooting one handed fast is a real challenge, even with a 22LR.
You must start with your pistol pointed 45 degrees from vertical. My first time ever doing this was pretty tough. Its funny how introducing the shot timer your shooting just falls apart. My scores definitely reflected that.
I tried again doing this one handed like our Chad from Turkey does it. Hand in pocket, just chill vibes. It definitely is doable but it is super challenging, even with a red dot, it would definitely be more difficult to get the shots off fast with irons.
I reran this a few times and got better and better the more I did it. Irons or not if you did this every day for 4 years, I can see how you’d get pretty good at it.
Shooting olympics style, my shooting fell apart
I tried some variations shooting this. It’s easier for me to shoot this squared up against the target instead of shooting sideways like the Olympic shooters do. This is because I’m cross eye dominant and this is typically how we shoot when shooting one handed in action pistol for mobility.
Shooting it two handed was even easier obviously, and I felt right at home as this is essentially like a bill drill but with 5 targets in quick succession instead of one. Give me a few boxes of ammo and shooting two handed, and I think I could get pretty good at this.
For kicks we tried this with 9mm. It is much harder with 9mm no doubt because of the additional recoil, especially when you’re up against a 4 second timer. I ran this with the fairly flat shooting Glock 34 and it was still pretty challenging.
So are we ready for the Olympics, not even close. It’s pretty impressive what those shooters are able to do. I’ll stick with my outlaw USPSA matches for now. However if your goal is to get to the Olympics this is a sport that most people actually could do and it’s cost of entry is a lot lower than other shooting sports. It’s insanely fun. If you already have a 22LR pistol, 40 rounds of 22LR is less than $5, and these 8″ target pasters are usually about $5, so for $10 you can pretend to be an Olympian too. Who knows, maybe the next 2028 gold medalist will be inspired to start training today, and it doesn’t take much to get started. At CRACKSHOT.tv we love highlighting shooting sports. If you liked the video please consider subscribing, see you next week with another video.
