Manchester 2002: A sport forever in Dunblane's shadow

They are pariahs with pistols, and if they were caught practising their sport here they could be arrested. Since the 1996 massacre at Dunblane, Britain's dwindling army of handgun marksmen have been reduced to the ranks of the politically incorrect; even worse, they are deemed to be outlaws.

Yet the leader of the renegade posse is hardly Jesse James. Mick Gault is a 48-year-old former RAF sergeant who works as a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence in Norfolk. He also happens to be the most medalled Briton in any Commonwealth Games. The record haul of four he collected in Kuala Lumpur four years ago is stashed in a drawer at his home near Dereham and a host of other trophies is in his loft.

Most of them have been acquired abroad because Gault is banned from shooting his speciality event, the 2.2 free pistol, in mainland Britain.

That's the law now, although an exception is being be made for the upcoming Commonwealth Games, when the national shooting headquarters at Bisley, in Surrey, will become a temporary suburb of the host city Manchester.

It is known that the Government was uneasy about giving special dispensation to allow pistol shooting, other than with air pistols, to be included in the Games, but backed down under fire from the then sports minister Kate Hoey. Had they stuck to their no-guns rule, there might have been no Games.

Because of the political opprobrium, the Manchester organisers originally wanted to exclude shooting but were threatened with boycotts by several nations as it happens to be the second biggest sport in the Games in terms of available medals.

In common with other pistol shooters, Gault is not allowed to practise in this country other than with an air gun. "If I bought a 2.2 into this country I would be banned for two years." That's why he has to go abroad to train, usually in Switzerland, at a shooting club in Zahrwagen, south of Zurich, where he keeps his guns.

Says the national coach Tom Redhead: "Fortunately the Swiss go out of their way to help us. They realise we are not murderers and simply want to pursue a sport."

Teams will be permitted one week's practice at Bisley before the Games but will be allowed to use their pistols only for the duration. Once the Games are over, the England team's guns will have to be transported back to Switzerland.

One irony is that Lottery funding pays for most of the visits to Switzerland. Another is that Gault and fellow UK shooters will have to obtain an overseas visitors' permit to shoot here. "When I learnt I had to fill in a visitors' permit to enable me to shoot for my own country, the country where I was born and bred, whose forces I served in, it really pumped me in the guts," he says.

While other nations have had four years to prepare properly for the Games, England's pistol shooters have had a total of nine days of training in Switzerland. While the cartridge skills have been helped by the legal use of air pistols, they say that practising with an air pistol for a cartridge event is like training for a steeplechase without the fences. "The recoil factor which happens with a 2.2 is missing," says coach Redhead." Bang, Bang, Bang is different from Bang... Bang... Bang."

Gault will also be shooting in the air pistol event which, like the free and standard pistol, demands consistent accuracy, firing into an 11mm bull from 50 metres. Although repeatedly raising and holding the gun steady has given Gault arthritis in his shooting arm, his proficiency over the years, since he took up the sport as an air cadet, has made him one of the world's top marksmen, averaging 580 out of 600 shots a time. At Bisley the strongest challenge will come from the Australians and Indians.

"Getting it right in shooting is a bit like hitting the ball sweetly in golf. You get a real kick out of a good shot. Any success I've had is probably because I am such a competitive bastard. I can't stand losing. It's the challenge of staying at the top that keeps me going. Sometimes when I come off the firing point my knees are trembling, I can't stand up. I'm knackered. It's a physical and mental strain over a two-hour period. It just about wastes me. But the elation of doing well is the reward."

He may be a big shot abroad, but at home it is his wife Janet who calls the shots, quite literally. He has built a sort of range-on-the-home in a specially reinforced garden shed which he calls "Crackshot Lodge". He trains there with an air pistol for an hour and a half every day after work, with Janet charting every shot as well as monitoring his timing and technique. Son Robin, 20, youngest of their three children, has been the British junior champion for the last two years. Gault also has back-up from the newly opened English Institute of Sport which covers medical assistance and fitness training. His coach says he has "a very professional approach in an amateur sport".

In the aftermath of Dunblane, Gault admits it was very much in his mind to say "Sod it all". "I did think about quitting, and I talked about it to my coach at the time, but he advised me to keep going. I have come to the conclusion that what I am doing is right. We have to keep the sport alive.

"I feel the ban was a knee-jerk reaction. We already had some of the most stringent gun laws in the world. Obviously you could not argue with the parents of Dunblane. They had lost their children, for God's sake. But being treated like a criminal just because you were a shooter was a gut-wrenching experience. I didn't think that could happen in a free society."