2 years ago in Guadalajara!

2 years ago I was in Guadalajara, Mexico for the 2018 Championships of the Americas. I secured Canada's first shooting quota spot for the 2019 Pan American Games. My teammate Lynda Kiejko won gold in her event and locked in a quota spot for the 2020/1 Olympic Games being held next summer in Tokyo.

This is what we did afterwards to celebrate her win... 

I'll be in Ottawa Sept 11-13 to support the CCFR

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights is organizing the Integrity March on Sept 12th. I'll be there... come say hello!

A huge CCFR shout out to #TeamCanada athlete, pistol shooter @alharding for his support of the CCFR, commitment to excellence in our sport and generous $5000 donation to the legal challenge. 🇨🇦❤️🥇#olympicathlete #internationalphenom #TeamAllan #NoGunBan #WorkOnCrime pic.twitter.com/Go4wij0Qwb

— CCFR/CCDAF (@CCFR_CCDAF) September 4, 2020

 

Throwback photo and SFC website update

 Here's an awesome photo from what looks like the 1994 Canadian Nationals!

JP, Stan Wills, John Rochon on the far left. Me on the far right.

Also, the Shooting Federation of Canada website has gone through a major update in design, content, and membership database and tools.

Stay healthy. Stay safe. Be kind.

Excellent training resources from OlympicPistol.com

Hopefully you're all staying healthy during this time. It's difficult training with limited or no access to ranges, gyms, fitness centres etc.

My friend Ramon over at OlympicPistol.com has a great article on home training exercises specific to pistol shooting. Go check it out!

Stay healthy, stay positive, stay productive, and wash those hands! :)

Stay healthy everyone!

What a difference a month makes. I hope you're all staying healthy and staying optimistic about things. Keep washing your hands, social distancing, and staying home but also staying active!

I've found myself refocusing my time differently the last while. With my competition / travel calendar being postponed and cancelled I'm at home a lot more. Since returning from Europe I have been at home for more days in a row than anytime in the last 9 years or so. It's good. Good to get into some routines and developing better habits.

Also, doing things like this one colour puzzle:

Finished the Ravensburger Krypt Puzzle 🧩@RavensburgerUK @RavensburgerNA #ravensburger #puzzle #krypt pic.twitter.com/WvwoAHVC1b

— Allan Harding (@alharding) April 3, 2020

And finishing a Rubik's cube while planking:

Stay focused, stay optimistic, get in touch with friends and family and check-in on how they're doing.

Stay healthy!

Intershoot recap and what's coming up next

I'm back home now and somewhat adjusted back to Pacific time zone. Those quick trips to Europe always feel too short and definitely take some adjusting. There and back. Plus training and competing 4 days of the week while I was away is a lot. Typically going to an ISSF World Cup you would do pre-event training 1 day and competition the next day for a single event.

My first day went well with the 565/600 and missing Finals by only a few points. The following days were more of a challenge. I shot a lot of 9.9's which in 10m pistol and the integer scoring they're counted as "9" even if they are a hair width away from scoring "10".

It was great to catch up with old friends from around the world there and to meet some new ones as well!

Me and Ramon Suarez (@olympicpistol)

Me, Nikhil Kumar, and Saurabh Chaudhary (@SChaudhary2002)

The Netherlands is beautiful, I'll aim to be back for Intershoot 2021 next year! Hopefully I can stay a few more extra days!

Sun setting outside the Sherlock Holmes pub

Packed and ready to fly home!

Up next will be:

• Mar 6-8: BC Airgun Champtionships - Vancouver, Canada
• May 22-24: Canadian Airgun Grand Prix - Toronto, Canada

Then in June I'll be back in Europe for the ISSF World Cup Series stages in Munich, Germany and Baku, Azerbaijan.

Intershoot has started!

Inrtershoot is officially under way. 270 competitors at Intershoot across men's pistol & rifle and women's pistol & rifle disciplines. 3 days of competition has begun!

Open training at Intershoot

All setup for some precision shooting!

Today I shot a 565 with 22 x's. My 'x' count was the second highest out of the male pistol shooters so I'm pretty happy about that. I did have a few flyers though which dropped my score from where I should have been given the volume of 10s I was shooting. Lots of good deep 10's but have some flyers I need to work on also. The area where those two 7's landed mean I was anticipating the shot.

My 565 from the first competition complete with 22 x's

Complete scores can be found here but if the link doesn't work I have a screenshot of them from the first match below (open to make larger):

Day 1 results for men's 10m pistol

My teammate Stuart Burns finished 29th and Robert Katz finished 33rd.

Tomorrow's match starts at 4pm CET, which is late in the day so my team and I will just be taking it easy before the competition. Tomorrow's scores will also be used for the team score. Go Canada! On Saturday we shoot at 8am CET and then will do a little sightseeing before our flight Sunday morning

Arrived in the Netherlands

I arrived in the Netherlands! It was a bit hectic just getting to Amsterdam. My original flight plan was to fly at noon Sunday from Vancouver and arrive to Amsterdam Monday morning and meetup with my teammates Stuart Burns and Bob Katz. That flight got delayed however so I needed to take an earlier flight from Vancouver to Toronto to make my connection.

Outside of the Rijksmuseum

In the library at Rijksmuseum

Ship!

Plane!

Beer!

me and Stuart Burns

Standing in front of cool light up bottle display

Nice ice cold Heineken at the end of the tour

We got to Amsterdam early to be able to get adjusted for the time difference... +9 hours difference for me! Powered through most of the first day and today is our only full free day so we went and did a bit of sightseeing! Rijksmuseum, wandered around a bit, and the Heineken Experience!

Tomorrow we will check-in at the Intershoot competition and get our equipment checked, fees paid, and get some pre event training in. We compete Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week, then fly home Sunday morning.

As always, you can follow along @alharding on Twitter and Instagram!

Stay tuned for more ...and thank you for the awesome emails!

Happy New Year!

I'm definitely late getting this post from drafts to published! ;)

Happy New Year all! I was rather quiet this past Fall due to focus on work related projects and less about shooting training. It's been a hectic year with getting let go from my job and figuring out my next chapter.

Highlights from 2019 in my Instagram best nine. Ask me about anything in the comments below!

Highlights from 2019!

It's now 2020 and lots of "stuff" is in the works. Some I can talk about now and some I will later on.

For now...  shooting!

Upcoming competitions I'll be competing and representing Canada at:

• Feb 4-6: Intershoot - The Hague, Netherlands
• Mar 6-8: BC Airgun Champtionships - Vancouver, Canada
• May 22-24: Canadian Airgun Grand Prix - Toronto, Canada
• Jun 2-9: ISSF World Cup - Munich, Germany
• Jun 22-30: ISSF World Cup - Baku, Azerbaijan
• Aug14-19: Canadian National Pistol Championships

Busy schedule filled with lots of travel. The one I am still figuring out schedule for is the Grand Prix in May as it conflicts with the BC Provincials but is also very close to the ISSF World Cup dates. Main issue is it's a lot of travel between Vancouver and Toronto. I'll connect to Munich via Toronto airport.

I'll be doing at least one blog post a month this year so stay tuned for more updates from Europe next week!