No shooting in CWG 2022. Shooters up in arms

London, January 19: Shooters are up in arms over the decision not to include their sport in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) chief executive David Grevemberg confirmed on Friday that shooting, classified as an optional sport, would not feature in Birmingham.

"We know they (Birmingham organisers) considered all optional sports carefully, but a final decision was reached," Grevemberg wrote in an open letter to the editor of Britain's Shooting Times.

"The CGF has awarded the Games supporting these plans and consequently shooting will not feature at the 2022 Commonwealth Games," it said.

Grevemberg, an American former wrestler who was chief executive of the 2014 Glasgow Games, recognised that would be disappointing for those who practised and followed the sport.

He said the CGF president would meet shooting's world governing body, the ISSF, to discuss future plans.

It will be the first time since Edinburgh 1970 that shooting, which became an optional sport for host cities after 2014, has not featured at a Commonwealth Games.

England will have a squad of 20 shooters at the 2018 Games on Australia's Gold Coast, including double gold medallist Steve Scott.

"Obviously we've still got the Olympic Games and all the other world events we try to achieve in," Scott said.

"But everyone who has tried to get to the Commonwealth Games this year and didn't, and has more than the ability to win a medal in 2022, are not going to have that opportunity to do so."

The Birmingham decision has also gone down badly in India, whose first individual Olympic gold medal was won in shooting by Abhinav Bindra at Beijing in 2008. Shooting has provided more than a quarter of India's total Commonwealth Games medals.