According to the information sources the Finnish Defence Forces is planning to stop organising sport shooting championships in its annually organised shooting championships. As a replacement there might be only sniper shooting and normal duty assault rifle and pistol shooting disciplines.
The Finnish Military Shooters Association highly appreciates sniper shooting and skills to use ordinary duty weapons but is very worried about the mastery of core competences in shooting which mission based shooting does not fully promote.
Furthermore, it is quite peculiar that cutting down sport shooting in defence forces championships it will be still continued with unmilitary sports like football and civilian biathlon. One can ask that how military football looks like and where it is played at combat zone?
Finnish military sports is best known by very high competence in shooting. As a evidence of this, Finland has won twice the best nation event and huge number of podium places in the International Military Sport Organisation (CISM) world championships. Furthermore there are also three olympic medalist and thirteen individual CISM world champions produced by the sport training system of the defence forces. And by now, there is still six military world champions in service.
The Finnish Military Shooters Association sincerely hopes that the sport shooting is given the high appreciation as a military sport and it will continue as a core discipline in military sports.
