Dueling As An Olympic Sport…Again? (Crazy story)

I have got a fun article for you today that’s somewhat timely with the Olympics in full swing.

Did you know that 32% of people polled before the Sydney Olympics wanted pistol dueling to be REINSTATED?  (I don’t think they liked those numbers, because I haven’t seen current stats for this year’s Olympics)

It’s important to note that the question wasn’t about Dueling being “introduced,” but “reinstated.”

As in, pistol dueling used to be an actual Olympic sport!

There were actually 2 different versions…

Full-contact 20M and non-contact 20M & 30M.

Here’s how it played out.

Around the turn of the century (1900), a doctor and target shooter named Dr. Paul Devillers created a 1g wax bullet made of tallow (rendered animal fat) and baryta sulphate (paper whitener used for photography) that wouldn’t break up in the gun and would splatter when it hit.

They were propelled by primers and had a muzzle velocity of just over 300fps.

Depending on the temperature, projectiles were stored in a box, in water, or on ice. This variability meant that the effect of impact could vary considerably.

With his patented bullet, in 1903, Devillers convinced a French gun manufacturer, Piot-Lepage to make special dueling pistols with handguards. (Handguards were necessary because of some wicked hand injuries)

It became popular enough that the Societie L’Assaut au Pistolet was formed in 1904 and they held weekly Friday matches in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe.

Things progressed quickly, and by 1906, dueling was an official Olympic sport, with medals for 20m and 30m distances…although the targets were plaster manikins instead of fellow participants. The 6 medalists were a mix of French, Italian, Greek, and Swedish duelists.

That changed by 1908.

The best duelers in the world happened to mostly be fencers who were competing at the 1908 Olympics.

So they showed up on the fencing grounds 11 days before they were supposed to fence and proceeded to put on a full-contact dueling demonstration before a select crowd…mostly press.

Mano a mano. Man facing man. No plaster dummies this time.

From the demonstration at the Olympics, the sport exploded, with dueling clubs at both the Carnegie Sword and Pistol Club in New York AND the NY Athletic Club.

But that was before WWI.

WWI ended dueling as a sport that had near-term potential of being re-instated as an Olympic sport.

And that brings us to today.  And a couple of the iconic images from the (air) pistol competitions…

Most of the competitors wore high-speed glasses and hearing protection…but some did not.  Why?

There are two extremes of shooting.

On one end, shooters try to create perfect shooting conditions…like the Olympics.

On the other end, shooters try to shoot good-enough in chaotic conditions…like self-defense.

Both are awesome.  Neither is catagorically right or wrong.

For the shooters who are trying to create perfect shooting conditions, what are they trying to do with all of the gear?

First off is hearing protection.  If you look at the audience, they’re wearing hearing protection as well.  For the shooters, it’s both about noise AND about simplifying/reducing sensory input to the brain so there’s more bandwidth available for sight alignment and trigger press.

With the eyes, there are a few things going on…

1. Blinders on the non-dominant eye.  For shooters who have challenges fusing the images between their eyes, the blinder is a common tool/crutch.  Closing an eye causes eye fatigue.  The fact that not all shooters wear blinders (including the silver medal team from Turkey) tells us that there is certain brain wiring that allows shooters to perform at a high level without wearing blinders like a horse.  What I’ve seen with high level shooters is that when we help the brain fuse the images from the 2 eyes together good enough that the shooter doesn’t need to wear blinders anymore, it calms the brain and allows them to achieve a new level of performance.
2. Lens on the dominant eye.  There is sight (what the eye sees) and there’s vision (what the brain does with the images from the eye).  I’m all for correcting vision with lenses…and doing it in a way that allows the brain to improve vision over time rather than using the lens as a crutch.  In fact, I oftentimes wear special order (because the power is too LOW) contacts with a -.25 correction because it allows my brain to filter out astigmatism and for me to see 20/15 or 20/10.  For competition, there’s no reason not to wear lenses that give you the best sight possible for the specific sport.  For self-defense, we want to be able to optimize vision and performance regardless of what our sight happens to be at the minute.
3. Aperture in front of the dominant eye to partially occlude their field of view.  In the image above, the visible field of view is restricted…kind of like looking through a lifesaver that’s close to your eye or a donut that’s a bit further out.  For some shooters, the hole is restricted A LOT (down to a pinhole) to reduce/eliminate astigmatisms.  For others, the reduction in visible field of view acts as a crutch to help them filter out the visual noise.

The fact that Turkish shooters Yusuf Dikec and Sevval Ilayda Tarhan competed with basic lenses and hearing protection is awesome for a couple of reasons…

1. It’s how we’d need to perform if we ever needed to use a firearm to save a life.
2. It shows what’s possible visually when the 20+ areas of the brain responsible for visual processing are working correctly.

Here’s the cool and crazy thing.

Over the last few years, I’ve helped HUNDREDS of shooters who previously had to shoot with one eye closed, squinted, or covered shoot better than ever with both eyes open by training their brains to fuse the images from their eyes more efficiently.

Sometimes for the first time ever…other times for the first time since a major head injury.

Most of them came to me to learn how to shoot pistols better…and they did…but at the same time, they shot shotgun, long range precision, and archery better with both eyes open, noticed dramatic improvements in comfort and reaction time while driving, better balance, and more.

How’s this possible with vision training?

I’ve got a video that will walk you through it and let you experience it in real time at https://VisionTraining.com

Check it out and let me know what you thought…

And if you have any direct connections to USA Shooting, please contact me and let me know.  We should be cleaning house in every single shooting event and I have tools and processes that could help make that happen.

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