Aug 18 (Reuters) - After years of struggling to raise the money to keep his dreams of Olympic skeet shooting glory for Ireland afloat, Jack Fairclough is closer to his target than ever thanks to a new tranche of funding from the European Shooting Confederation (ESC).
The governing body has distributed more than €1.1 million ($1.3 million) to its member federations in the first six months of a new financial support program launched in December 2025, and the cash has been a game-changer for the likes of the Irish 29-year-old, who is setting his sights on the podium at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
"It's been amazing, to be fair, the funding has been huge for me. It's enabled myself and other pathway athletes to be supported at major competitions in 2026 and 2027, which we otherwise might not have even been able to attend," Fairclough told Reuters in an online interview.
"And it means when we get out there, we can kind of focus on the job, rather than worrying how we're going to clear this with our credit card company when we get home!"
An avid player of video games as a child, Fairclough discovered his keen eye for hitting targets by chance when, as a young teenager, his family held his birthday party at a local range.
"I remember just falling in love with it instantly, and the whole time me and my friends were shooting, all the instructor kept saying was, 'You know you've got like a real talent for this?'," he said.
"I remember around the same time as well, the London Olympics were on, and I think I just discovered the sport at such a good time with so much going on."
Until recently, Fairclough was forced to fund his burgeoning career himself, relying on his own resources and the goodwill of friends, family and sponsors.
DEVELOPMENT PATHWAYS
Boosted by his earnings from coaching, the new ESC funding has helped him with travel and equipment costs, and the money has also been used by Target Shooting Ireland to invest in development pathways for other promising athletes.
Securing funding from the European governing body has also had the knock-on effect of more money coming into the sport from the Irish government.
"It has opened up other avenues of additional support within Sport Ireland for us to grow the sport ... without this support, we wouldn't have been able to facilitate additional support, because we wouldn't have the programs to justify it," said Allison Fairclough, mother of Jack and the high- performance director at the Ireland Clay Target Shooting Association.
Trish Maher, a sports therapist who counts managing athlete pathways among her many tasks in the Irish shooting program, has been given the chance to work more closely with the athletes.
"I was doing bits and pieces with some of the athletes on a voluntary basis, and thankfully, now that we've got the ESC funding, it's been amazing that I am actually getting funded to go to all these competitions and work with the athletes, because I wouldn't be able to do it otherwise," she told Reuters.
Jack Fairclough believes the new structures can take him to the very highest level.
"The past two years, I just feel like a lot of training has just really clicked together," he said."I feel like I've never been in a better position to really do well at the Olympics - it's my goal to win an Olympic gold medal, and yeah, I feel very optimistic about it."
($1 = 0.8639 euros)
(Reporting by Philip O'Connor, editing by Ed Osmond)
