SHOOTING was part of the original Modern Olympics programme at Athens in 1896 and has been held at every edition since with the exception of St Louis (1904) and Amsterdam (1928).

Women had their own competition for the first time in 1984 but were allowed to take part between 1968 and 1980 as the events were classed as ‘open'. The only woman to win a medal in that period was Margaret Murdock (USA) who won a silver in the 50 metres three position rifle event at Montreal in 1976.

Britain's most successful Britons have been Malcolm Cooper and William Pimm. They each won two gold medals; Cooper in 1984 and 1988 and Pimm in 1908 and 1912.

Four Britons have won a record three medals. Harry Humby won one gold and two silver medals 1908-12. Cyril Mackworth-Praed also won one gold and two silvers, all in 1924. Alec Maunder won gold, silver and bronze 1908-12 and William Pimm won two golds and a silver 1908-12.

Britain's Gold Medallists:

AMOORE, Edward John
Born: 20 March 1877, Twickenham, Middlesex, London
Died: 11 July 1955, Twickenham, Middlesex, London
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, 50 & 100 yards team)
1908 Bronze – Shooting (Small-bore rifle disappearing target)
 
The son of a Wimbledon bookseller and stationer, Edward Amoore, affectionately known as ‘Monkey', was a member of the Southfields Rifle club (now the Wimbledon Park Rifle Club).
 
He was a member of the Great Britain team that won the gold medal in the 50 & 100 yards small-bore rifle event in 1908. Amoore was one of eight men who tied with 45 points in the individual small-bore rifle 25 yards disappearing target event but took the bronze medal on the count-back.
 
He also took part in the individual small-bore prone and moving target events in 1908 but without success.
 
Amoore served in the first World War as the adjutant of the Honourable Artillery Company, the second oldest military organization in the world after the Pontifical Swiss Guards in the Vatican.

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BRAITHWAITE, John Robert
Born: 28 September 1925, Arnside, Cumbria, England
Olympics Competed In: 2 (1964, 1968)
Olympic Medals:
1968 Gold – Shooting (Trap)
 
Bob Braithwaite, grew up in Lancaster before attending the University of Edinburgh where he was an all round sportsman who played football and captained the university cricket team. He was inducted into the University of Edinburgh's Sporting Hall of Fame in 2010.
 
He graduated as a Veterinary Surgeon in 1947 and whilst he always enjoyed shooting game, he no longer felt he could shoot live creatures and took up clay pigeon shooting instead.
 
He began shooting competitively in 1956 and by 1964 he had gained a place on the British shooting team as a trap shooter at the Tokyo Olympic Games when he finished seventh.
 
Braithwaite also qualified for the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City however, his successful career as a vet at Garstang, near Preston in Lancashire, meant that he was unable to travel to any of the training facilities available to the British team so he built his own trap shoot on a piece of land adjacent to the family farm.
 
The training paid off as Braithwaite took gold in Mexico City.
 
He missed two of his first 13 clays but then hit 187 consecutively to equal the Olympic and world records with 198 hits. Braithwaite became the first Briton to win a shooting gold medal in 44 years and he would be Britain's last clay pigeon champion for 32 years until Richard Faulds won the double trap title in 2000.
 
The result was such a surprise that the organizers were caught off guard and had not prepared the national anthem for Braithwaite's medal ceremony, which had to be delayed!
 
It is widely stated that this was one of the last times that an impressive and determined performance by a strict amateur managed to outshine the new breed of ‘professional' amateurs at the Olympic Games. Sadly he was not selected to defend his title at Munich in 1972 and was again overlooked for the 1976 Montreal Games,
 
Braithwaite's daughter Norine was a middle distance runner and at Cosford in 1970 set a UK junior women's 1500 metres record at 4 minutes 16.8 seconds and was ranked number ten in the world that year. Sadly she never followed in her father's footsteps and completed in the Olympics.
 
Bob was was awarded the MBE.

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CARNELL, Arthur Ashton
Born: 21 March 1862, Somers Town, London
Died: 11 September 1940, Bedford Park, London
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle prone 50 & 100 yards)
 
When he won his gold medal in 1908 Arthur Carnell was aged 46 years and 112 days, the oldest man to win a small-bore prone shooting Olympic gold medal. Sergei Martynov of Belarus was the second oldest at 44 when he won gold in the 50 metres prone event at London 2012.
 
Arthur Carnell, and his second wife Ada were both members of the Mansfield (Highgate) Rifle Club, when he won the small-bore rifle 50 & 100 yards gold medal in 1908, beating his fellow Briton Harry Humby into the silver medal position by a single point. After his win Carnell was invited to take part in the team event but declined wishing another member of the team to have a chance of winning gold – which the British team duly did.
 
Carnell spent a large part of his life living in Devon and was a partner in a firm of Plymouth auctioneers. When he retired he moved back to London, and in his will he gave a bequest of £100 to Exeter Cathedral for the memorial chapel of the Devonshire Regiment. His Olympic gold medal went to the NRA Museum.

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COOPER, Malcolm Douglas
Born: 20 December 1947, Camberley, Surrey, England
Died: 9 June 2001, Eastergate, West Sussex, England
Olympics competed in: 4 (1972, 1976, 1984, 1988)
Olympic medals won:
1984 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle three positions, 50 metres)
1988 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle three positions, 50 metres)
 
Malcolm Cooper was only the second Briton to win two Olympic shooting gold medals; the first being William Pimm in 1908 and 1912.
 
Shortly before he went to live in New Zealand as a 13-year-old, where his father was stationed as a lieutenant with the Royal Navy, Cooper expressed a desire to take up shooting at his Suffolk school. But 10 misses from 10 shots at his first attempt led to his sports master telling him to quit as he was not cut out for the sport. He wrote to Cooper 27 years later and apologised!
 
But when he got to New Zealand he was determined to get to grips with shooting and it was not long before his determination paid off and he was selected for the Auckland City shooting team. He was the youngest member of the team.
 
On returning to England at the age of 16 he served an apprenticeship as a shipwright in Portsmouth but practiced his shooting at the HMS Nelson Rifle Club and in 1970 he was selected for the England team. He also won his first British title and between then and 1984 he won the British three position rifle title at Bisley 12 times.
 
He competed at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics but without success. However, after winning his first European title in 1977 and a silver medal at the 1978 World Championships he was confident of a medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics but the Shooting Association supported the Governments' call not to send a team to the Games and Cooper had to wait until 1984 for his third crack at an Olympic title.
 
Cooper won three medals at the 1982 Worlds in Venezuela, and he went to the Los Angeles Olympics as a medal hopeful and despite a 15th place in the air rifle event he captured gold in the 50 metres small-bore rifle three position competition. He won with a world record equalling score of 1,173. His fellow Briton Alister Allan won the bronze medal.
 
Cooper retained his title in 1988 with Allan in the silver medal position this time. Cooper's defence of his title nearly ended before it started when a BBC cameraman knocked over his rifle, causing it damage. However, a sporting member of the Soviet team repaired Cooper's rifle in time for him to compete.
 
Two years later Malcolm won his last major title, the 300 metres small-bore rifle three position title at the 1990 Moscow World Championships.
 
Throughout his career he won 149 medals, 61 of them in Olympic, World, European or Commonwealth championships. He broke or equalled 15 world records. Apart from his two Olympic gold medals, Cooper won won all five individual titles at the 1985 European Championships, and at the 1986 World Championship he set five world records
 
Malcolm's wife Sarah was also an excellent shot and appeared with him in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics but, unlike her husband, she failed to win a medal. However, the pair won gold in the small-bore rifle three position pairs event at the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games in 1986.
 
In 1978, Cooper and Sarah were two of the co-founders of Accuracy International, manufacturers of precision sniper rifles including those used by many military and police forces around the world. The company won the Queen's Award for Export in 1998.
 
One of the world's great small-bore rifle shots of the 1980s, Malcolm Cooper was awarded the MBE in 1984. He retired from shooting in 1991 to concentrate on Accuracy International. Sadly he died of cancer at the age of 53 in 2001.

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EASTE,Peter
Born: not known
Died: not known
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
Peter Easte was a member of the team that won the gold medal in the trap competition in 1908, albeit with the lowest score of all six members of the British team.
 
In the individual competition he tied for 17th place.
 
Nothing else is known about Easte.

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FAULDS, Richard Bruce
Born: 16 March 1977, Guildford, Surrey, England
Olympics competed in: 5 (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012)
Olympic medals won:
2000 Gold – Shooting (Men's double trap)
 
Richard Faulds was Britain's first Olympic shooting champion for 12 years, and the first clay pigeon gold medalist for 32 years when he won the double trap at the Sydney Games in 2000.
 
Faulds started shooting at the age of ten on the family farm in Hampshire and despite a weakness in his left eye he managed to compensate for it and at the age of 13 he made his Great Britain debut - at 16 he was the world junior champion.
 
An excellent trap shooter, he made his Olympic debut at Atlanta at the age of 19 in 1996 and finished fifth.
 
When he won his gold medal four years later he came from behind to tie with the defending champion Russell Mark of Australia. Faulds went to win after holding his nerve in the shoot-off. Both men missed the two clays with their first shots. Marks again missed both with his second shot but Faulds then stepped up and calmly hit both clays to take the gold.
 
He competed again at Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008 and at London 2012, finishing joint 13th, sixth and 12th respectively. He is one of only two British shooters to appear at five Olympics; Alister Allan (1968-92) being the other.
 
Richard won the European double trap title in 1997 and between 1993 and 2008 he won seven senior and junior World Sporting titles, eight Fitasc senior and junior World titles and seven English and British Open Sporting titles. He also won bronze medals at the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games.
 
His wife Tanya is also an excellent shot and in 2011 they opened the Owls Lodge Shooting School in Hampshire,
 
Faulds was awarded the MBE for his services to the sport.

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FLEMING, John Francis
Born: 26 August 1881, Keswick, Cumberland, England
Died: 9 January 1965, New Malden, London
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won: 1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, moving target)
 
John Fleming was one of four Briton's to win individual gold medals at the 1908 London Olympics.
 
His gold came in the moving target small-bore Rifle event but after 45 shots four Britons tied for first place with Maurice Matthews, William Marsden, Edward Newitt and Fleming all scoring a not-too impressive 24 hits. Fleming was awarded the gold medal on a count-back.
 
He also took part in the small-bore rifle disappearing target event and was positioned joint ninth despite a more impressive success rate of 42 hits out of 45.
 
One of ten children, Fleming was born in Cumbria but moved to London to live with his brother-in-law as a teenager and got a job working in the Civil Service with the Board of Education. He took up rifle shooting and was a member of the City Rifle Club and also represented the Civil Service and London & Middlesex Association in various shooting competitions. He was also a Life member of the National Rifle Association and served with the NRA School of Musketry that was set up by the NRA during World War One.
 
In 1934 he was in the ‘King's Hundred' – one of the top hundred competitors out of thousands of entrants to make it to the third and final stage of the King's Prize at Bisley, finishing joint 17th and six points behind the winner Captain Barlow. Fleming trailed by just one shot going into the final 1000 yard phase of the competition.

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HUMBY, Harold Robinson “Harry”
Born: 8 April, 1879, St Pancras, London
Died: 23 February 1923, Muswell Hill, London
Olympics competed in: 3 (1908, 1912, 1920)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, 50 & 100 yards team)
1908 Silver – Shooting (Small-bore rifle)
1912 Silver – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
One of four British men to have won three shooting medals, Harry Humby was in the team that won the gold medal in the small-bore rile 50 & 100 yards event in 1908. And at the same Games he took silver in the small-bore rifle individual prone event, but was a long way behind fellow Briton Arthur Carnell.
 
A second silver medal followed in the team trap event at Stockholm in 1912 when he was the highest scoring Briton with 91 points in awful conditions. He also came close to a bronze medal in the individual event, finishing fourth behind his American, German and Russian rivals.
 
Humby competed in his third Olympics at Antwerp in 1920 and came close to another medal when he was part of the British team that came fourth in the trap.
 
Humby was a member of the Alexandra Palace Rifle Club and, like his father and older brother, he was a London dentist. His sister Florence kept up the family sporting tradition as a she was a gymnastics teacher.

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LESSIMORE, Edward John
Born: 20 January 1881, Clifton, Bristol, Gloucesterhire, England
Died: 7 March 1960, Bishopston, Bristol, Gloucesterhire, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals won:
1912 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle prone 50 metres, team)
 
The son of a Bristol architect and surveyor, Edward Lessimore went on to become a successful businessman running a furniture business in the city.
 
He also served the 4th Gloucestershire Regiment for over 20 years, reaching the rank of Captain
 
As a rifleman, he took part in the King's Hundred at Bisley several times and also represented England in the McKinnon Cup.
 
A member of the City of Bristol Rifle Club, the highlight of his shooting career came at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics when, along with William Pimm, Joseph Pepé and Bob Murray, he won the team gold medal in the small-bore rifle 50 metres prone competition.
 
Lessimore also took part in the individual 50 metres event, finishing fourth, losing the bronze medal to his fellow Briton, Harry Burt on a count-back. He also took part in the 25 metres disappearing target event, but could only manage 12th
 
Lessimore's furnishing business, E J Lessimore & Son, was on Whiteladies Road, Bristol, home to the BBC Bristol TV studios.

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MACKWORTH-PRAED, Cyril Winthrop
Born: 21 September 1891, Mickleham, nr.Dorking, Surrey, England
Died: 30 June 1974, Burley, Ringwood, Hampshire, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1924, 1952)
Olympic medals won:
1924 Gold – Shooting (Running deer double shot, team)
1924 Silver – Shooting (Running deer, single shot, individual)
1924 Silver – Shooting (Running deer, double shot, individual)
 
Mackworth-Praed won the gold medal in the running deer double shot team event with Allen Whitty, Herbert Perry and Philip Neame in 1924. He also won silver medals in each of the two individual running deer events – winning the silver in both instances after a barrage shoot-off. In addition, he also took part in the 100 metres team running deer event, finishing fourth and also the team clay pigeon and individual trap events.
 
Mackworth-Praed made a second Olympic appearance at Helksinki in 1952, 28 years after his first and he finished 11th out of 14 in the individual clay pigeon shooting competition. He was 60 years of age at the time.
 
The son of a wealthy banker, his father Robert was the Lord of the Manor of Mickleham Downs in Surrey. During a lonely childhood, Cyril loved being on the land and enjoyed wildlife, fishing and shooting. Like his father before him, Cyril went to Eton, where he started shooting competitively and then, also like his father, he went up to Cambridge.
 
He served with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards at the back end of the first World War and served with them again in the 1939-45 hostilities. He reached the rank of Colonel. He competed in the King's Hundred at Bisley six times in the 1920s and 30s. He was made a life member of the Rifle Association in 1924. In the mid-1920s he was regarded as the best all-round shot in the country, and was certainly Britain's best shot at the 1924 Olympics.
 
Mackworth-Praed was a wealthy stockbroker but spent a lot of his time in Africa pursing his hobby of bird watching and collating information on bird species of Africa, a subject on which he wrote many books, and papers for the Royal Geographical and Zoological Societies.
 
He was awarded the OBE in the 1964 Birthday Honours List for his services to ornithology and work in the Natural History department at the British Museum.

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MATTHEWS, Maurice Kershaw
Born: 21 June 1880, St Pancras, London
Died: 20 June 1957,Bournemouth, Hampshire
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, 50 & 100 yards team)
1908 Silver – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, moving target)
 
Maurice Matthews won two medals in 1908, and came close to winning a third.
 
Having won the gold medal in the small-bore rifle team event, he won the silver in the small-bore rifle moving target event, losing only on a count-back to fellow Briton John Fleming, and he finished fourth in the small-bore rifle prone position competition.
 
A member of the famous Mansfield Highgate Rifle Club of London, Matthews was an estate agent, valuer, surveyor and architect based in London's Tottenham Court Road.
 
Matthews served as an officer with the Territorial Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the 1st City of London Regiment. He was also a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for the County of London.
 
As a politician he served on the London County Council from 1931-36. In 1948 he was honoured by being appointed the Renter Warden of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, one of the Livery Companies of the City of London.
 
He was also a former chairman of the London Trustees Savings Bank and in 1955 was appointed the vice-president of the Trustees Savings Bank Association.
 
Matthews was awarded the OBE in the 1953 New Year's Honours List and died in 1957, one day short of his 77th birthday.

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MAUNDER, Alexander
Born: 3 February 1861, Loxbeare, Tiverton, Devon, England
Died: 2 February 1932, Bickleigh, Tiverton, Devon, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1908, 1912)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
1912 Silver – Shooting (Trap, team)
1908 Bronze – Shooting (Trap, individual)
 
Alec Maunder finished third in the individual trap event at the 1908 Olympics behind Canadians Walter Ewing and George Beattie but he gained ample revenge when he was in the British team that won the trap gold medal with the Canadians, including Ewing and Beattie, in second place.
 
Maunder won a third Olympic medal when he was part of the team that won the trap event at Stockholm in 1912.
 
Although not selected for the 1920 Games he was selected in 1924 at the age of 63 but refused the invitation stating that he would rather see a younger person take his place on the team.
 
A former London pub landlord, Maunder spent most of his life in the Palmer's Green area and was a member of the North London Gun Club. He retired to the Devon village of Bickleigh in 1929 following the death of his wife Emily. Sadly he died of a heart attack at the local Working Men's Club in 1932 whilst playing billiards the day before his 71st birthday.
 
Coincidentally, the first winner of the Alexander Maunder Challenge Cup, presented in his honour, was Walter Boundy, the man Maunder was playing when he had his fatal heart attack. Boundy, of the New Inn, was married to Maunder's niece.
 
The trophy was donated to the Club by Maunder's daughter Hilda, and was a cup presented to him at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912.

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MERLIN, Gerald Eustace
See 1906 Intercalated Games
 
MERLIN, Sidney Louis Walter
See 1906 Intercalated Games
 
MILLNER, Joshua Kearney
Born: 5 July 1847, Smithfield, Dublin,
Died: 16 November 1931, Rathmines, Dublin
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Free rifle, 1000 yards)
 
Joshua Millner, known as Jerry, is the oldest Briton to have won an Olympic gold medal. He was 61 years and 4 days when he won the Free Rifle gold medal in 1908 which makes him the third oldest Olympic gold medalist of all time.
 
Millner joined the Dublin shooting club in 1871 and within two years was a member of the Irish team. He is uniquely, the only Irishman to win an Olympic shooting gold medal.
 
At the London Games he also took part in the Running Trap single and double shot events, finishing 9th and 15th respectively.
 
A respected shot at both rifle and pistol, he took part in more than 700 competitions. He adopted a peculiar prone shooting action, preferring to lay on his back rather than his front,
 
The son of a wealthy Dublin wool merchant, Millner eventually took over the family business. He had a long and distinguished career in the Territorial Army and Colonel Millner later served with the Carlow Militia and was their last Commanding officer when the Militia disbanded in 1908.
 
He was elected to the Council of the National Rifle Asociation in 1908 and later found fame as a breeder of Irish Setters, writing the first book about the breed which was published in June 1924.
 
Millner's Olympic gold medal was sold for IR£3,000 at auction in 1998.

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MOORE, Frank W
Born: not known
Died: not known
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
Frank Moore captained the British team that won the trap gold medal in 1908. He also took part in the individual event finishing 10th and five points off a medal position.
 
Nothing else is known about Moore.

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MURRAY, Robert Cook
Born: 18 February 1870, Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 28 April 1948, Sale, Cheshire, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals won:
1912 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle prone 50 metres, team)
 
Scottish-born Bob Murray was the son of an Edinburgh master bootmaker. He moved to England where he was a traveling salesman and settled in the Urmston area of Manchester where he became a member of the Manchester Rifle Club and also joined the Manchester volunteer Regiment.
 
At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, along with William Pimm, Joseph Pepe and Edward Lessimore, he won the team gold medal in the small-bore rifle 50 metres prone competition.
 
Murray also took part in the 50 metres individual event, finishing sixth, and he was fifth in the disappearing target 25 metres event.
Some sources say that Murray founded the first small-bore rifle club in Britain, the Rumson Miniature rifle club, but this cannot be substantiated.

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NEAME, Philip
Born: 12 December 1888, Faversham, Kent, England
Died: 28 April 1978, Selling, Faversham, Kent, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1924)
Olympic medals won:
1924 Gold – Shooting (Running deer double shots, team)
 
Sir Philip Neame stands uniquely as the only recipient of the Victoria Cross to have won an Olympic gold medal.
 
He was awarded the VC following his bravery at Neuve Chappelle, France in 1914 when he single-handedly checked an enemy advance and rescued wounded soldiers. And ten years later, back in France, at Paris, he won his Olympic gold medal as part of the British team that won the running deer double shot competition with team-mates Cyril Mackworth Praed, Allen Whitty and Herbert Perry.
 
He was the only member of the gold-medal winning team not to take part in any other event at the Paris Games.
 
Neame was educated at Cheltenham College and then the Royal Military College at Sandhurst from where he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1908.
 
He served in the British Army between 1908 and 1947, taking part in both wars with the Royal Engineers where he reached the rank of Lieutenant General.
 
He had a very distinguished army career and, in addition to his Victoria Cross and Knighthood, some of Neame's other honours included the Companion of the Order of the Bath, Distinguished Service Order and the French awards, Légion d'honneur and Croix de Guerre. Many of his medals including his VC are on display at the Imperial War Museum in London. He was five times mentioned in dispatches. He spent nearly three years as a prisoner of war in Italy until he escaped in January 1944.
 
After World War Two he was appointed the Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey in 1945, a post he held for eight years. The following year he was Knighted.
 
In addition to shootin, Neame also excelled at polo, point-to-point, skiing and hockey. He was also a big game hunter and thanks, if that is the right word, to that hobby he met his wife.
 
While hunting in India in 1933 Neame was mauled by a tiger and taken to a local hospital where he was treated by a nurse from the Lady Minto Nursing Association who nursed him back to health. Neame was Harriet Alberta Drew's first patient following her arrival in India and he fell in love with her and at the age of 45 he got married for the first time to his beloved ‘Berta'.

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PALMER, Charles
Born: 18 August 1869, Old Warden, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England
Died: 14 November 1947, Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire (now Conwy), Wales.
Olympics competed in: 3 (1908, 1912, 1920)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
1912 Silver – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
Having won the gold medal in the team trap event at London in 1908 it was Charles Palmer's nerve that made sure Great Britain pulled off the silver medal in Stockholm four years later.
 
The Americans were guaranteed the gold medal in 1912 and Palmer was the last man to shoot for Britain in very windy and blustery conditions. He needed seven hits out of ten shots to guarantee second place but with one shot remaining he had hit only six targets and they were tied with the Germans in second place. But coolly he hit the tenth target to give his team the silver medal.
 
Palmer competed in his third Olympics at Antwerp in 1920 and came close to collecting a full set of medals when Great Britain were pushed into fourth place in the team trap event by Sweden.

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PEPÉ, Guiseppe Pietro “Joseph”
Born: 5 March 1881, Manchester, England
Died: September 1970, Sutton, London
Olympics competed in: 1 (1912)
Olympic medals won:
1912 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle prone 50 metres, team)
1912 Silver – Shooting (Small-bore rifle disappearing target 25 metres, team)
 
Joseph Pepé won the gold medal in the small-bore rifle, prone, 50 metres team event at the 1912 Olympics along with team-mates William Pimm, Edward Lessimore and Bob Murray. Pimm was also in the team with Pepé that won the disappearing target silver medal at the same Games.
 
Pepé also competed in the two individual small-bore events and he came close to a bronze in the individual disappearing target event, losing out in a count-back to the Swede Gideon Ericsson. Swedes, occupied all three medal places.
 
The son of an Italian immigrant, Joseph was a member of the Wimbledon Park Rifle Club and, like his father worked in the printing trade.

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PERRY, Herbert Spencer
Born: 23 January 1894, (possibly Ladybrand, South Africa)
Died: 20 July 1966, Bridport, Dorset, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1924)
Olympic medals won:
1924 Gold – Shooting (Running deer double shots, team)
 
Herbert Spencer was a member of the team that won the running target double shot gold medal in 1924 but he only got selected for the team at the last minute.
 
When it was realised that the event was being held indoors it meant the targets were more difficult to see and the team captain Corporel Faunthorpe felt the older members of the squad were at a disadvantage so he selected younger members in Cyril Mackworth-Praed, Philip Neame and Herbert Perry, along with the 61-year-old experienced Allen Whitty.
 
The burden of shooting last fell on the team's youngest member, Perry, and he needed 67 points from his final round of shooting to force a tie with the Norwegians who were sitting in first place. Only two competitors had previously bettered 67 in the whole shoot so it was a tall order for Perry but he rose to the occasion.
 
Despite scoring only 29 with his first ten shots he managed 39 with his final ten to clinch victory by a single point. His 39 was the best 10-shot total in the entire competition.
 
Perry also took part in the individual event and tied for 13th place.
 
Lieutenant (later honorary Captain) Perry served with Royal Field Artillery between 1916-22.

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PIKE, James F
Born: not known
Died: not known
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
Pike was the second highest scoring member of the Brtish gold-medal winning trap shooting team in 1908 with 77 points. Only Alec Maunder scored more. However, Pike was disappointing in the individual event, finishing joint 12th with just 50 points, 22 behind the Canadian winner Walter Ewing.
 
Very little is know about Pike except that he was probably born in Devon and was a member of the Instow Rifle Club in North Devon in 1907.

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PIMM, William Edwin
Born: 10 December 1864, Bow, London
Died: 1952 Dade County, Florida, USA
Olympics competed in: 2 (1908, 1912)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, 50 & 100 yards team)
1912 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle prone, 50 metres team)
1912 Silver – Shooting (Small-bore rifle disappearing target, 25 metres team)
 
William Pimm was the first Briton to win two shooting gold medals. It would be 76 years before this feat was equaled when Malcolm Cooper won a second gold in 1988. 
 
Between 1908 and 1912 Pimm took part in eight events, winning three medals, all in team events.
 
In 1908 he was in the winning small-bore rifle 50 & 100 yards team. A second gold followed four years later in the small-bore rifle 50 metres prone team event and in the 25 metres disappearing target event he was in the team that won the silver to make up his tally of three medals. In that same silver medal-winning team was his son-in-law William Styles. Also in the team was Joseph Pepé, who was also in the 50 metres prone team gold medal winning team with Pimm.
 
Pimm was the adjutant of the miniature shooting events for the 1912 Olympics and an interesting article in The Times shows that he was trying to recruit members for the individual 25 and 50 metres events for the British team via the newspaper. The article went on to say that successful applicants would have to undertake to pay their own expenses to Stockholm of around £15. Applicants were invited to write to Pimm at his London address. Can you imagine that today?
 
Pimm was a well known Victorian and Edwardian artist, largely of landscapes and portraits. He trained in Antwerp in 1885 where he met Vincent Van Gogh. He also met his future wife Louise Van Tongelen.
 
Many of his works still sell at auction for several thousand pounds and he was at one time commissioned to paint the portraits of the Lord Mayor of London each year. His works have also hung in the Royal Academy.
 
During World War One he was sent to the front line to draw pictures of the German lines on the Western Front.
 
Pimm emigrated to the United States in 1940 and lived with his daughter in Florida where he died in Dade County in 1952.
 
Before he went to the United States Pimm lived in Sussex, as did his son-in-law William Styles. Both were hired by local golf clubs to shoot rabbits and keep them off the courses and there was a rivalry between the two men to see who could shoot the most each day!

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POSTANS, John Musgrove
Born: 1869, Shelley, Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, England
Died: 9 January 1958, Walton-on-Naze, Essex, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1908)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Trap, team)
 
The son of a Suffolk farmer, John Postans was educated at an Ipswich boarding school before following his father and grandfather's footsteps as a farmer.
 
An excellent shot he was selected for the British squad at the 1908 Olympics and won a gold medal as part of the team that won the trap gold medal.
 
In the individual event, Postans was one of three Britons, along with Charles Palmer and Richard Hutton, who tied first place on 23 points after the first round of shooting. However, the Canadian team put in an objection to the first round scores and they were allowed to shoot again with one of them, the eventual gold medalist, Walter Ewing taking the lead on 27.
 
Postans withdrew, probably in disgust at the Canadian objection, and failed to take part in the second and third rounds of the comopetition.

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STYLES, William Kensett
Born: 11 October 1874, Islington, London
Died: 8 April 1940, Seaford, Eastbourne, Sussex, England
Olympics competed in: 2 (1908, 1912)
Olympic medals won:
1908 Gold – Shooting (Small-bore rifle, disappearing target)
1912 Silver – Shooting (small-bore rifle, 25 yards team)
 
William Styles was the son of a London Baptist Minister who went on to become the Clerk of the Rolls for the Law Society. He also went on to win the gold medal in the disappearing target small-bore rifle event at the 1908 London Olympics.
 
At the end of the competition, eight competitors, all British, all scored the maximum 45 points – indicating that the target was too easy to hit. Styles was declared the winner after a count-back.
 
Styles also competed in the moving target small-bore rifle event and finished joint ninth.
 
He won a second medal at the Stockholm Games in 1912 when he was a member of the four-man British team that took silver behind the Swedes in the 25-metre small-bore rifle event. In the team with him was his father-in-law William Pimm, whose daughter ‘Cissie' Styles married in 1911.

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WHITTY, Allen
Born: 5 May 1867, Martley Hills, Worcestershire, England
Died: 22 July 1949, Aldermaston, Berkshire, England
Olympics competed in: 1 (1924)
Olympic medals won:
1924 Gold – Shooting (Running deer double shots, team)
 
Allen Whitty was the oldest member of the running deer double shot team (with Cyril Mackworth-Praed, Herbert Perry and Philip Neame) that beat Norway to win the gold medal by a single point in 1924. He also took part in the individual event and finished 18th.
 
Having started life as an apprentice blacksmith he decided to join the Worcestershire Regiment as a young boy and he joined three weeks before his 17th birthday. He spent his early days stationed in Jersey before being sent to serve in India in 1887, where he eventually met his Indian-born wife Rachel – they went on to have 11 children.
 
Whitty received his commission in March 1900 and had a long and distinguished career in the Army, becoming a Lieutenant-Colonel. He was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1916. His latter days saw him involved with Army recruitment before he eventually retired in 1932 after 48 years service.
 
He represented his Regiment at many shooting contests, firstly in India and then at Bisley and other venues around Britain and abroad.
 
He took part in the King's Hundred at Bisley four times, finishing tenth in 1924. His last appearance in the Hundred was in 1938 when he was 71 years of age. He was also a member of the Army VIII team between 1897 and 1920.

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WILSON, Peter
Born: 15 September 1986, Dorchester, Dorset
Olympics competed in: 1 (2012)
Olympic medals won:
2012 Gold – Shooting (Double trap)
 
Despite being the youngest of the 23 starters in the double clay event at the London 2012 Games, Peter Wilson went into the Games as the current world record holder and was ranked number two in the world at the time.
 
He set the new World mark of 198 (out of 200) at a World Cup meeting in Arizona earlier in 2012 and despite scoring only 188 at the Olympics, his score was good enough to see off his European rivals to clinch the gold medal on home soil.
 
Wilson was raised on a Dorset farm and shooting wasn't originally his first sporting love, because he preferred playing squash and cricket. But a snowboarding accident caused damage to his shoulder which curtailed those activities. His father suggested he took up shooting to try and strengthen the damaged shoulder.
 
His first major honour came in winning the 2006 European Junior Championship and in 2011 he was a member of the British team that took the silver medal in the senior European Championship at Belgrade. But those wins were overshadowed by his Olympic gold medal in 2012, but he had to work hard for that gold medal.
 
Because of the British shooting team's failure to win a medal at the 2008 Beijing Games, all funding was cut and Wilson had to organise his own funding. He took a job as a waiter in a pub near his parents farm but it entailed working long hours which he then had to fit his lengthy training sessions around, but it paid off.
 
Wilson received the MBE in the 2013 New Year's Honours list.
 
Despite his world record, Olympic gold medal and MBE, the one thing that made him very proud was being a Mystery Guest on the BBC quiz show, A Question of Sport!

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