Founded 1997 Country Germany | No. of teams 16 in each discipline | |
 | ||
Sport 10 m air rifle and 10 m air pistol Founder German Shooting Federation Most recent
champion(s) Air rifle: SG Coburg
Air pistol: SV Kelheim-Gmünd | ||
As in many other sports, the premier German club competition in 10 metre air rifle and 10 metre air pistol is known as the Bundesliga. The league, open to both men and women, was created in 1997 and is administered by the German Shooting Federation. In each discipline, sixteen teams of five shooters each compete during a season spanning from October to February for the German team championship. Apart from the top German shooters, the league also attracts many shooters from other European countries, as well as a few from India and the United States, and involves a number of Olympic medalists and other shooters of international success.
Contents
Match format
The Bundesliga matches mainly follow the International Shooting Sport Federation's rules for air rifle and air pistol, with the following important changes:
The shooters are paired up based on previous results so that the top shooters from both teams stand next to each other, and so on down. The shooter achieving the best 40-shot result in each pair wins a point for his or her team. Ties are resolved by firing single shots as needed. Thus, a match can be won by either 5–0, 4–1 or 3–2.
The match format of the Bundesliga has been so successful that the European Shooting Confederation mirrored it when creating the ESC Youth League for national teams of young shooters.
Regular season
Each Bundesliga consists of two divisions of eight teams each:
A single round-robin of seven match days is conducted in each division during October–December or October–January. As shooting is a sport where the club league forms only a part of the competition season, the matches are concentrated to four weekends, organized in such a way that the clubs that placed 1–6 during the previous season have two home-range matches while the remaining two teams only have one each. In the table, teams are ranked on the number of won matches; tie-breaking criteria are 1) number of individual points won, 2) results between the concerned teams, 3) number of won points on first position (etc.).
Finals
The top four teams of each division reach the finals (Bundesligafinale), held during a single weekend in February at the same location for both air rifle and air pistol. Quarterfinals and semifinals are held on Saturday, and bronze and gold medal matches on Sunday.
Promotion and relegation
Below the Bundesliga are five regional leagues: Regionalliga Nord, Regionalliga West and Regionalliga Ost below the northern division; Regionalliga Südwest and Regionalliga Süd below the southern division. The eighth-placed team of each Bundesliga division is automatically relegated to the appropriate regional league. The seventh-placed team competes together with the two top teams of each regional league for two spots in next year's Bundesliga.
Below the regional leagues, there are leagues managed by each Landesverband (in northern Germany, these generally follow the state borders, while the large states in the south are divided into several Landesverbände).
Winners
The following clubs have become German champions since the inception of the Bundesliga.
Current clubs
The following clubs are qualified for the 2009–2010 season. Ranks from the previous season are in parentheses, the defending champions in bold and promoted teams in italics.
Foreign shooters
Of the five shooters entered in a match, at least four must be German citizens. Despite this rule, many prominent foreigners participate in the league. The list of foreign shooters registered for the 2008–09 season includes the following Olympic finalists (although all did not compete in every match):
Both holders of the final world records in 10 metre air rifle, Gagan Narang and Sonja Pfeilschifter, also compete. Even the regional leagues attract some foreign champions: for example, Olympic champion Matthew Emmons stayed with Post SV Plattling (Regionalliga Süd air rifle) when they were relegated from the Bundesliga in 2008.