World Shooting Para Sport Considering Changes To LA2028 Program

World Shooting Para Sport has launched a survey for athletes, coaches, National Paralympic Committee and National Federation representatives about the proposed changes for the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympic Games programme.

The proposed changes are to add new disciplines for vision impaired (VI) shooting and shotgun (Para trap) to the Paralympics medal programme, while slightly altering the existing rifle events. To add the new disciplines, World Shooting Para Sport would need to combine the men’s and women’s 10m Air Rifle Standing SH1 (R1/R2) events and the men’s and women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions SH1 (R7/R8) events in order to have these quotas available for the additional events. The new R1/R2 and R7/R8 events would then be mixed gender events, instead of separate male and female events. 
 

Tyler Anderson, World Shooting Para Sport Senior Manager, said “The key change here is that these medal events will become more competitive with the increased number of competitors in each event. It is important to us that with these proposed changes SH1 rifle athletes still have the opportunity to win medals in four different events - this has not changed. The main aim of this change is to provide additional medal opportunities for our new and growing athlete populations.”

World Shooting Para Sport first adopted Para trap in 2017. In Para trap, competitors use a shotgun to hit ‘clays’ which are propelled into the air from machines on the ground. The first Para Trap World Championships took place in Lonato del Garda, Italy in 2018.

Vision Impaired (VI) shooting officially joined World Shooting Para Sport in 2019. In VI shooting, athletes use an audio signal to guide them in their aiming, with the audio signal rising in pitch as the point of aim moves nearer to the centre of the target.

Both VI and Para trap were added to the Para Shooting World Championships programme for the first time last year in Sydney, Australia.

Speaking about the new disciplines, Anderson added, “VI shooting gives us an exciting opportunity to expand how we showcase our sport to the world and allows us to grow our sport by welcoming a new athlete population. Shotgun is very much a part of our shooting sport family and allows us to reach new stakeholders and grow our sport together.” 
 

The Shooting para sport community have until November 30th to provide their feedback on the proposed program changes. World Shooting Para Sport will then make a decision on which events and disciplines they will ask the IPC to include on the Los Angeles 2028 Paralympics program.