Nattrass goes great guns
SHOOTING STAR
Trapshooter's work pays off in Olympic
events for women
BEVERLEY SMITH
Globe and Mail
Wednesday, August 23, 2000
Toronto -- Susan Nattrass is 49 years old, and she'll be going to her fourth Olympic Games
in Sydney. Really, they are her Games.
The Alberta-born trapshooter feels like a proud mother because, for the first time, female
competitors in trap and skeet will have their own event. And Nattrass made it happen, by
riding shotgun for five years on international officials who were reluctant to change.
"I'm ecstatic about going," she said from her home near Seattle. "These
Olympics are so special because I worked so hard to get a separate women's event. I'm like
a proud mother. I'm so excited for everyone. I'm so pleased it happened."
Nattrass felt she had to do something. The International Shooting Union banned women from
Olympic trap and skeet events from the 1996 Games on, and handed them a bone. It allowed
them to shoot double trap instead, a new discipline that had been developed during
the late 1980s.
But they hadn't taken into consideration that many female shooters in the world disliked
double trap, in which targets are thrown two at a time. Apparently, nobody bothered to
ask.
One Hungarian competitor had shot skeet all her life. Nattrass had shot (single) trap all
her life. "We didn't want to do double trap," Nattrass said. "It's like
telling a downhill skier that they've got to compete in cross country. It was
dreadful."
Nattrass faced the battle of her life in overcoming the arbitrary decision. "The
members of the International Shooting Union would see me coming and they'd turn around and
go in the other direction," she said.
"I did politics. I did surveys. I did a very comprehensive history of women in
shotgun sports."
So many of Nattrass's female peers were behind her. They kept saying, "If you don't
do it, it's not going to happen." Many male coaches supported Nattrass's quest. She
got Women's Sport International involved, and through it, Anita De Franz, who was on the
International Olympic Committee's women's working committee.
The president of the international union was supportive, but didn't know if the numbers
warranted inclusion in the Olympics. Nattrass showed him that they did. "It took five
years, almost to a day," she said.
The laugher was that Chinese female shooter Zhang Shan had defeated the men in skeet at
the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, becoming the first female to win a mixed competition at
the Games. But she didn't get to defend her title after the shooting union instituted a
"men only" rule.
The edict had come down in April of 1992, and in Barcelona, Nattrass was shooting from the
hip in more ways than one. She wrote a long letter to IOC president Juan Antonio
Samaranch, pushing for separate women's shotgun events. She had a friend on the shooting
team who helped translate it into Spanish.
Nattrass slipped into the Canadian Olympic Association offices at the Games and tapped out
15 letters that she planned to hand deliver to Olympic officials.
When Zhang won the gold medal, Nattrass wrote the news by hand as a P.S. on all 15
letters. At an athletes' meeting a couple of days later, Nattrass met Samaranch. "Ah,
so you're the one," he said to her.
In 1996, Nattrass shot double trap and earned an Olympic quota spot for Canadian women,
but she didn't get to go to Atlanta after Cynthia Meyer won the Canadian trials.
Nattrass almost quit the sport during the 1990s after she became director of athletics at
Saint Mary's University in Halifax. "It was very difficult to be competitive and do
my job," she said. The closest shotgun training facility was in Toronto. Nattrass
couldn't justify the time it would consume.
In 1993, Nattrass won two World Cups in double trap, but she would get to the competitions
a few days early, and "practise like crazy," doing eight or 10 rounds instead of
four. But she couldn't keep up the pace. Her energy was sapped.
"We could shoot trap at world championships, but it was having this double trap
forced on me, that really took the wind out of my sails," Nattrass said. "I
didn't understand the logic. I couldn't understand why they were being so close-minded,
because here it was, the nineties. They should have been doing everything possible to
encourage
women."
Nattrass was at a World Cup in Italy in May of 1997 when the secretary-general of the
International Shooting Union approached her and said: "Now don't tell anybody, but
you've won."
"Won what?" she asked.
"Women will be in the Olympics in 2000."
Nattrass began to cry.
Her battles may not be over, however. The IOC allowed a quota of 12 women to compete in
trap or skeet in Sydney, although there will be 48 men entered in those disciplines.
Females want more spots.
And there still are no trap or skeet events for women at the Commonwealth Games, despite
the fact, Nattrass said, that there are many top-flight women in the Commonwealth who
shoot.
But the next battle will be fought over something that really irks female trap and skeet
shooters. In trap, men shoot 125 targets, women only 75.
In 1978, while competing against men, Nattrass was shooting a total of 200 targets over
three days. "Now we've gone from a three-day marathon to a one-day sprint and it's
just ridiculous," she said. "It's not an indication of who is the best shooter,
it's sort of who is the luckiest. The essence of shooting is being the best, consistently,
over several days."
When Nattrass petitioned to have more targets in trap, she was told that the IOC doesn't
want women to compete with the same comparative scores as the men. "I personally
think that's crap," Nattrass said. "My argument to that is: Women run 100
metres. Men run 100 metres."
But at least the first step to have separate events for women in the Olympics has had an
immediate impact on the numbers of female shooters at world championships and World Cups,
Nattrass said. Immediately after the announcement, the numbers doubled and tripled.
"Now all of a sudden there are women's coaches, too. Women's teams are getting
funding. The women are now getting everything that the men are getting. It's really
exciting to see."
Nattrass will leave for Sydney on Aug. 31, with her mother, who doubles as her coach and
her 11-year-old niece. Nattrass has told her niece that when she turns 12, she will teach
her to shoot, if she wants to learn.
"One of the reasons I battled so hard to get a separate women's event was for my
friends, my friends' children and my niece," Nattrass said. "I wanted Canadian
girls and women to have the opportunity, if they want it.
"It's benefited me so much, from being able to compete in trapshooting. I've seen the
world. It's shaped who I am."
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