“Have you seen this boy” insurance salesman edition
Isn’t aiming with both eyes open the way to do it? I learned to do that in the military to keep your situational awareness and never stopped. Also, it works really well with a holographic sight, like you’ve got the red dot / reticule floating on the target.
If you look at Olympic pistol shooting pics there’s a bunch with a hand in the pocket too.
Both eyes open is great for the real world. Olympic target shooting is a very different animal. Don’t think of it like normal shooting. Situational awareness is not a factor. Unlike practical shooting, tunnel vision is desired. Most shooters wear blinders to obscure the off side eye. On the aiming eye they often wear special glasses. They are focusing on absolutely lining up the physical sights, there are no optics in Olympic pistol shooting.
For comparison, this is what a more conventional Olympic headgear setup looks like.
Yes the hand in pocket is pretty common in Olympic shooting. Unfortunate that it was part of the list as it undercuts the rest of the valid observations unusualness of the setup and success.
This shooter was much more casual than most. Most shooters will line up with special highly stable, but strange looking stances.
Pretty sure that’s an air pistol and firing an actual pistol like that (assuming something big enough actually blow a head off) would do weird things to her shoulder.
Your eye is still open under that flap though, no? I dabbled in Olympic pistol shooting back when I was doing across-the-course service rifle, and I was told to always keep both eyes open by the dude teaching me. Same for service rifle (and later palma). I always found that closing one of your eyes fucks up your focusing. If you don’t have the little flappy dealy, you just do your best to defocus/deprioritize the view out of your non-dominant eye. I actually went for quite a while without any sort of cover because it helped me avoid cross firing (which is probably more of an issue with across-the-course than with Olympic pistol).
You’re absolutely right about the lack of spectacles though. This guy is one hell of a marksman.
The unusual factor at the Olympic level is that he both chose not to wear a blinder and not to close his eye. This means he was getting visual input from both eyes, that as you noted he had to block out mentally.
When shooting is down to the millimeter, all of this is important. This is the exact opposite of practical shooting, where you want a large field of view, or potentially an occluded eye effect to aim in some cases. (Cover the front of a red dot and then aim with both eyes open for a test of occluded aiming. Your brain will overlay the dot from the shooting eye and the target from the weak side eye and you will be able to aim. It will not be down to the millimeter accurate however, which matters within the abstract environment of target shooting.)
Yeah, every time someone mentions the hand-in-pocket thing it’s “ah, you don’t know what this event is”. Same with that one about holding the gun with both hands.
So with the addition of some better equipment, like an eye shield, maybe he could have taken home the gold? Is there a GoFundMe?
On the one hand, I was just making a joke. You’re probably right.
On the other hand, there are Olympians working part time jobs to pay for their training and equipment. Not every country sponsors their athletes, and this shit ain’t cheap. Few things highlight global economic disparity like the Olympics.
If the caption is right this guy is Turkish military. They will absolutely give him all the range time and equipment he asks for.
Not that impressed, but still quite cool.
If somebody did the same in competitive rifle shooting I’d be astonished…and no, I don’t mean you need to keep one hand in the pocket.
So by your logic silver is something not often won by anyone in Olympics?
yes
literally only one person can get silver in each category every 4 years? per 8 billion people out there
In 2020 there were 448 events at the Olympics, let’s round up to 450. Each event gives 3 medals, for a total of 1350 medals. The Olympics are held every four years, so that 337.5 medals are awarded in an average year.
There are about 8.1 billion people in the world. On average, 0.000004 % of the worlds population receives an Olympic medal each year.
If this were a completely random yearly lottery, and you lived for 100 years, you would have about a 0.0004 % chance of winning an Olympic medal in your lifetime.
I would count myself lucky if I won that by the time I was 50.
Silver?
Pathetic.
