Paris 2024 Olympics: Why women have outperformed men in air rifle shooting?

A couple of years ago, Divyansh Panwar, then India’s 10m leading men’s air rifle shooter and an Olympian from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, took a look at the monitor displaying the SCATT reading of the then 18-year-old Ramita Jindal – only recently a member of the Indian team.

SCATT is a high-precision optical sensor attached to the rifle barrel that tracks barrel movements, then tracks and displays the entire aim-point trajectory in real time as shooters aim and then fire at the target and Panwar gawked as the monitor showed just how little the relatively raw Jindal’s barrel was moving.

“The SCATT reading was that the barrel was moving about 6mm. He was wondering just why that was happening because his movement was about 10mm despite the fact that he was much more experienced than me,” says Jindal. A lower rate of movement of the barrel means more time for the shooter to hit the bullseye.

It’s that observation that first got Jindal thinking over whether she did actually have any advantage over her senior male compatriot. Turns out she had. It wasn’t just her.

The reason, say coaches and experts in the sport, is the nature of rifle shooting which rewards isometric strength – the ability to overcome resistance – rather than dynamic strength like most other sports. Most uniquely though, the physical anatomy of women gives female shooters a physical advantage in contrast to almost every other sport where men have the edge.

Over the years, women have consistently outscored men in the 10m air rifle event. Results at the Paris 2024 Olympics seemed to bear this out. The qualification cut-off (eighth place score) in the men’s 10m air rifle event at Chateauroux was 629.8. The same score would only have placed 12th in the women 10m air rifle event where the cut-off was 631.3.

It was the same situation at the three ISSF World Cups – the highest standard of competition in shooting – this year. The qualification cut-off for women at this year’s Cairo World Cup was 632.3 in contrast to 630 for men. The cut-off at the Baku World Cup was 631.2 for women and 630.5 for men while that at the Munich World Cup for 632.5 for women and 631.5 for men.

The same trend was noticed in the mixed team event in Paris. In qualification, only Kazakhstan and Mexico finished in the top 10 with the man outscoring the woman in the pair. Kazakhstan’s male competitor, Islam Satpayev, had the highest score, but the next five highest scores belonged to women. In contrast, the six worst scores were all posted by men.

This isn’t a new trend either. At the Tokyo Olympics, researchers discovered that there was no statistical difference between men and women in air rifle competitions. In contrast, men did slightly better in air pistol, trap and skeet competitions. Even a competition where there is statistically no difference between men and women in terms of performance is remarkable. In nearly every other sport (with the exception of equestrian in which men and women compete in the same competition), it is the other way round.

The physical advantages that men enjoy in most sports (taller frames and a more muscular upper body) – the men’s world record in the 100m for instance is nearly nine per cent faster than the women’s over the same distance for instance – prove to be a disadvantage specifically in the case of rifle shooting.

“Normally in sport, men have between 5-12 percent more performance than woman in the same category. This isn’t happening in rifle shooting,” says Professor Daniel Mon Lopez of the University of Madrid, who studied the phenomenon in a publication, ‘Recent changes in women’s Olympic shooting and effects in performance’ released just before the Tokyo Olympics.

Daniel Burger, the chief coach of the Swiss shooting team which won a bronze medal in the women’s 10m air rifle program through Audrey Gogniat, has no doubt why that is so.

“If there is a sport that is almost designed for a woman it would have to be 10m air rifle competition,” he says. “It is a precision sport – it isn’t your physical strength that is the most important here. In fact, the three factors most important for shooters in the air rifle event is balance, fine motor skills and mental control and I think women have the edge here,” he says.

This is mostly true, he says, when it comes to the natural advantages in anatomy. “Speaking in general, women are shorter than men, have narrower shoulders and wider hips. This is great for a shooter. A smaller shooter is a more stable shooter. And if your weight is distributed lower in your body – as is the case generally for women – you have a lower center of gravity which allows you to stay balanced. When you are shooting, there are very minute pushes and pulls – be it the wind from the air conditioning or even just the pulse in your body – that can cause you to miss your target. The larger you are, the more this will affect you,” he says.

There are other anatomical advantages, says Burger, “In the standing position, women place their elbow of the arm supporting the rifle handguard very close to their hipbone if not exactly over it. They can use bone structure to hold up the gun. There’s almost a direct line from their hands to their elbow to their hips to the ground,” says Burger.

Finding the same posture is generally harder for men. “For a lot of guys, their elbow ends several inches above their hipbone. They end up using their ribcage to support their elbow,” he says.

All these edges, Burger says, are particularly highlighted in standing events like the 10m air rifle. He doesn’t think there’s that much of an edge for women rifle shooters in events like the 50m rifle 3 positions event. “I think that being taller doesn’t help you when you are shooting standing up. But when you have positions like the kneeling and prone positions, there’s no actually and advantage to have longer arms,” he says.

While these arguments generally hold true, not everyone is completely convinced. “While I think women do have certain advantages, I don’t think you can say every woman shooter is the same way or has the same physiological advantages. Even within women there is a lot of variation. I think a lot depends on the qualities of the individual shooter,” says Kim Jin-Oh, coach of the the South Korean team which won a gold in the women’s individual category through Hyjoin Ban who also scored the highest qualification score across men and women at the 2024 Olympics.

Recent developments in the sport – especially in the stabilising suits that men and women wear during competitions – have flattened the distinction between men and women somewhat. For the first time in many years, the current men’s world record in qualifying is currently higher than that in the women’s discipline. “The material is so strong and stiff that it makes your internal structure a little less important than what it used to be,” says Burger.

At the end of the day, Ramita Jindal says the fact that women compete in different categories than men mean any physical advantages are nullified. “I know that there are certain advantages that women have in air rifle when it comes to body shape but at the end of the day we compete in two different events. I also think there’s a lot we can learn from each other. There’s a lot I do learn from my seniors and that doesn’t matter whether they are boys or girls,” she says.