News and Notes
By Dave Johnson Director of Operations
Team Logistics: Not All Fun and Games The role of team logistics
is often a thankless job. You never get it all right and the only time you hear about it is when something gets screwed up. Despite rumors to the contrary, we strive to get it right because nothing we do is more important than ensuring the athletes and coaches competing across the globe are well taken care of. Still, there’s a lot that
goes into it and by detailing the work, time and money it involves, we hope it will pro- vide you with a better under- standing of the lengths we go to try and get it right. To date, this year USA
Shooting has booked well over 500 airline tickets, cluding itineraries
in- for 67
people to travel to Gabala, Azerbaijian for the fi nal World Cup of the season. All told, USA Shooting spends over $1 million on airline tickets in any given year. The trip to Gabala re-
quired visas for entry and 40-plus hours were spent trying to acquire E-visas. That work was for naught when only 11 of the 67 vi- sas arrived prior to athlete departure due to a system breakdown of the Azerbaijan government. Add a level of detail un-
seen in other sports when international travel with fi rearms is included and you have the makings of a messy situation. The fact is
that there are fewer airlines that will allow international travel under those circum- stances. Fewer airlines to work with and that means fewer options available to get our athletes where they need to be in a timely, orga- nized fashion. Charters to get athletes
from Baku to Gabala were promised by the organizing committee to avoid a fi ve- plus hour bus ride follow- ing a 30-hour trip. Those charters never materialized, which meant more travel woes for already weary ath- letes.
With these events,
we’re at the mercy of the or- ganizing committee and the information and services they provide.
That informa-
tion is not always accurate. In the case of Gabala, not
all spots were fi lled for the athletes trying to achieve their Minimum Qualifying Score. This had more to do with timing than anything due to the timing of USAS Nationals and the small window of time USA Shooting had to obtain gun permits. We made ev- ery attempt to try and fi ll all available MQS slots, but in some i nstances that was virtu- ally impossible.
8 USA Shooting News | September 2015
Additionally, some MQS slots were limited by the or- ganizing committee due to range space. The fact remains that
sometimes USA Shooting can only be as good as the airlines, host city, govern- ments and the destination country allow us to be. I think it’s important to
note that most of the USA Shooting staff is built from former athletes of this sport. That should mean some- thing. As such, we recognize how impor- tant getting it right is to the welfare of our athletes and t he ir
ability to perform at peak levels. Everything we strive for is with that goal in mind. We hired Amanda Noble to upgrade our performance levels in this area and to- gether we’re working hard to ensure all team logistics are suitable to that of what world-class athletes should expect.
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