Here's a post from someone who shot the event. It's an interesting read.
TRGon 03 Jun 2011 at 10:04 am link comment
Hello to All,
I have just returned from Budapest, Hungary where I participated in the 2011 Police and Military Sniper World Cup. It was my first such competition and I placed in the top third among 107 competitors from Europe and Asia. You all can read about the structure of the competition (types of exercises, location, etc) on the Web so I won’t go into that. What I will go into was the rampant cheating on the part of the Chinese military and police teams and the complicity of the event organizers and judges. This isn’t sour grapes because I was nowhere near the top of the leader board and the cheating did not effect my individual scores or final placement. What it did effect was the integrity of the competition and the hard work and excellent performances of the teams, specifically from the Czech Republic.
Here are some samples:
During a night shoot exercise during a preparatory display of the targets several shooters jumped the gun and shot on their targets – a classic display of a lack of concentration and trigger control…it happens. Initially the on-field judges asked the shooters to stand away from the line so that they could be identified and given a Zero score for the exercise. No one stood up. Competitors in that area of the line then pointed to several shooters from China’s police team, as well as members from other teams, as the shooters. The judges then cleared the line and went down range to check targets. As I watched through my spotting scope (the range was a little over 100m) I saw which targets had been shot. Most had been shot by Chinese shooters. When the judges returned they had a discussion. They then announced that the range staff had “made a mistake” and that the exercise would be re-shot. Complaints where shouted from all who did not shoot and another meeting was called. It was then announced that the exercise would be cancelled and another would be held in its place.The end result was that Chinese shooters who should have received zero scores for their error were not penalized at all.
A day exercise involved shooting 400+m targets from positions of cover behind a barricade. This was a team event involving two shooters with 3 shots each. After the event we moved up to the 215m line to shoot another exercise on another, smaller value target. As we moved the judges moved forward and marked, apparently unbeknownst to the Chinese, the hit/misses on the previously shot high value targets. We then shot the closer exercise and went forward to look. It turned out that the high value targets shot by the Chinese competitors had both marked and unmarked holes on them. It would have been impossible to any professional sniper to have mistaken the targets. The Chinese double shot them to falsely get as many points as possible.
On the last day of the competition the top two position were held by snipers from China and the Czech Republic. The point spread was very close. After an exercise one of the judges approached the Czech shooter and told him he would be assessed a 25 point penalty. He asked why and she replied by telling him she was very sorry but had been instructed to do so by the competition organizers. She could/would not tell him the technical reason for the penalty. The Chinese shooter ended up winning the competition by a margin of less than 25 points.
During the competition word soon spread about the cheating by the Chinese teams and the favoritism shown to them by the event organizers. The tone of the competition soon turned from one of comradeship and sportsmanship to one of frustration. At the awards ceremony no one but the Chinese shooters and their entourage applauded when the winner was announced. After the awards ceremony all Chinese participants left the venue like thieves in the night for what I assume was a reception elsewhere.
I later learned from event staff (who were also disgusted by what they were ordered what to see and what not to see) the following facts: the Chinese government was the principal sponsor of the event; the Chinese teams had been in Hungary for the previous two months, had been given the exercises beforehand (everyone else learned about the exercises at a briefing held the night before the first day of competition), and had each sent several thousand rounds down range before the start of the event.
That’s it. Draw your own conclusions. If you are as outraged as I am – and again, I stress that I had no chance of winning (this time!) and the cheating did not effect me personally – please pass this information along. Better yet, check my claims out for yourselves. I’ve purposely left names out but you can see the results for yourselves on-line. This could have been a great competition but it ended up being a farce. I think the only was to solve this problem is to bring all of this to light. When this event is discredited, as I think it should be, perhaps competitors will boycott it until changes are made the the playing field is leveled.
The true winners of this event were robbed. The competitor from the Czech Republic who came in second is, in my opinion, the greatest competing sniper in the world and a good guy to boot.
No way to verify this and for all I know it could be mud slinging who knows? Having professional "display" teams is pretty common. A few guys are lucky enough to basically be full time professional shooters who train for these types of events full time. They learn the "tricks" of competition that while they may not be tactically sound they shave seconds off your time and increase your score. Other guys come in right out of the field work very methodically and smartly getting quality hits, but it is not always reflected in a high score. Does it mean they are not good snipers? Hell no, they just may not be good competitors. A few guys are good enough to meld both into one and those are truly top notch snipers, watching them work is excellent to see.
