More than meets the eye

Vision plays a huge role in how well we shoot and eye dominance issues can be resolved — if we know who to ask, says Simon Reinhold

- Simon Reinhold

When she was 17 years old, Collyn Loper was the youngest member of the US shooting team who competed at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. She had already won a gold medal in Trapshooting in the Pan American Games the year before and she would eventually finish fourth on the biggest sporting stage of all.

Her shooting glasses are black over her right eye which leads people to ask her if she has an eye dominance problem. “Yeah,” she replies, “a big one.” She is completely blind in her right eye and has been since birth because of a rare, hereditary disease.

Kim Rhode — one of the most successful Olympic shooters of all time, and Collyn’s room-mate that year — pointed out that her achievement was made even more remarkable because she is righthanded and had to learn to shoot off her left shoulder. Anyone who tells you that to reach the top level of shooting sports you must have better than average eyesight should google Collyn Loper. She is living proof that determination is more important.

Eye dominance is both key to successful shooting and incredibly personal. The received wisdom on the internet may not apply to you and the only way to be sure is to engage the services of a competent coach who understands that, on this subject, there are few catch-all answers. Worse still, eye dominance can change for anyone at any time.

Put simply, we have two forward-facing eyes that give us binocular vision but for many people (not all) the view from one of those eyes, the master, is favoured by the brain. As the eye above the rib acts as your rear sight on a shotgun, if it is being undermined by the other eye you have an issue.

Depth