The year 2025 is very important for the IPSC Region Germany: The shooting confederation BDS (Bund Deutscher Sportschützen) has it’s 50th anniversary and at the same time representing Germany in the IPSC for 35 years.
Text: Stefan WingertText: Stefan Wingert
Photos: Stefan Wingert and Maik Röpke
To celebrate this there was a shooting event hold at Philippsburg on the weekend of July, 26th/27th with a party on the Saturday evening.
IPSC President Vitaly Kryuchin was invited and held a laudatory speech in front of more than 300 participants. He emphasized that the BDS becoming the IPSC Regional Directorate for Germany in 1990 was a crucial moment for both – IPSC and BDS. The BDS has more than 111,000 members of which more than 10,000 are active IPSC shooters. Germany was always amongst the top three Regions in IPSC, since the most successful regions are awarded annually. One precondition for this success was of course the availability of the shooting range in Philippsburg, which was built by Friedrich Gepperth on his own expense. Nearly every weekend a large Level3 match is hold on this shooting range.
With the CZ Customs European Open (formerly Infinity Open) being the most prominent and biggest match in Germany that has nearly 50% of the more than 400 competitors from abroad. This underlines that IPSC Shooting brings together people from all parts of the world, building friendship and mutual understanding.
Also within IPSC Friedrich Gepperth has done a lot, which is not known by many people. The current power factor system as well as the detailed technical definition for the guns used in the divisions were proposed by him. Shaping IPSC into a sport shooting organization was mainly driven by Gerhard Schiefke and Friedrich Gepperth but succeeded only after the election of Nick Alexakos as IPSC President in 1995.
Vitaly Kryuchin explained that with IPSC being member of SportAccord AIMS the next step is getting recognition by the IOC and becoming a member of ARISF (Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations). As many of the IPSC regions have already been recognized by their National Olympic Federations this step would help all IPSC members globally.
According the the IPSC President that given the totally unjustified restrictions for the IPSC sport in Germany, which are still in force today, there can be no doubt that the BDS as an umbrella organisation for IPSC in Germany is absolutely necessary and provides huge support for the IPSC shooters in Germany. “Friedrich Geppert has been a very successful German Regional Director for more than 32 years and is now IPSC Vice President. With Sigrid Schuh as his successor there can be no doubt that the IPSC leadership in Germany will continue to be one of the best in the world. I can really congratulate you for having those people running the BDS. I sincerely hope that with your new government it will be possible to put down the totally unjustified restrictions that you suffer from.”
Finally the IPSC President called Friedrich Geppert to the stage and awarded him with the IPSC “Ehrenmedaille”
