Always worth remembering that when shooting was first introduced in the Olympics it wasn't separated by sex— until women started winning.
Shooting was first introduced in the Olympics in 1896 at the first modern Olympics. It was a men only event. This remained the case until 1968. Shooting events were open to both sexes from 1968-1980. No woman ever won at any of these events, but there was a silver medal in 1976.
This is how nearly all women's leagues were created. A woman (or team of women) won the world championship and before the next season started there was an exclusive league for them.
& they didn't forbid professionals until the working class guys who rowed ferries on the Thames started beating the rowing teams from Oxford etc.
shooting is also the only sport where alcohol is considered to be a performance enhancing drug
Women's football, massively popular in WW1, then banned by the FA in 1921 because wahhh the poor men
yeah, Zhang Shan winning in 1992 seems to have REALLY annoyed some people.
This has been true of a lot of sports. If humans were rational, we'd have individual sports sorted by weight rather than gender.
More than once as a child on the opening day of deer season I watched my mother drop a deer with one shot from across a field at dawn - a deer I didn’t even know was there - like it was nothing. Then she turned to me, said “okay let’s get it home.” She and my sister are deadeyes.
Women warriors have always been considered the fiercest... It is a Cheyanne woman, buffalo calf road woman, who is often credited with killing Custer.
Friend worked as a civilian security guard at the military base where her husband was a soldier. Had to learn to shoot pistol, and quickly got very good at it. (She also had the kind of hand steadiness to paint D&D miniatures and said that nobody should've been surprised that carried over to guns.)