Jack Scott

Jack Scott’s story is surely one of the unusual and laudable in New Zealand sport’s history.

Scott became a world-class shooter, competing at two Commonwealth Games and being selected for an Olympics despite having had a leg amputated as a child.

When Scott was 11, he contracted a rare bone infection that resulted in the amputation of his right leg above the knee. But that didn’t prevent him becoming a leading smallbore rifle shooter, chosen at the age of 42 in the 1980 Moscow Olympics team. Unfortunately he never got to compete there because of the American-led boycott of those Olympics.

Scott was born in Gore in 1937, the son of an electrical contractor.

When he was 11, he was kicked in his leg while playing rugby and this resulted in him contracting osteomyelitis, a rare bone infection. After four months’ treatment, his right leg above the knee was amputated in an operation at Dunedin Hospital.

After the amputation, Jack spent many months off school and at 15 he left altogether to take up a cabinet making apprenticeship.

He said his first leg was a simple “peg leg”, and that three years later he received a full prosthesis. He must have been a pragmatic, can-do character – he said having to walk the two miles to and from work was physically very demanding and he needed to have cysts removed from his stump on many occasions.

After three years of his apprenticeship, the family moved to Pareora, 14km from Timaru, where Jack gained work in the local freezing works. He ended up working there for 28 years, scheduling regular cyst removals during the works “off season”.

At Timaru Hospital during one of these visits, he had an argument with a nurse who demanded that he take a sleeping tablet. Three weeks later, he got engaged to that same nurse, Doreen, the beginning of a very long and successful marriage.

In 1972, Jack was elected President of the Canterbury/Nelson and Marlborough Meat Workers Union, a position he held for 11 years. In 1983 he was elected Assistant Secretary of the New Zealand Meat Workers Union, which required him to move to Christchurch.

The family remained there until his retirement in the mid-1990s, when they shifted to Kaiapoi. They lost their home in the 2011 earthquake and moved to Rangiora.

Jack’s father introduced him to smallbore rifle shooting at 14 and it became a lifelong passion. Within three years, he’d become the Eastern Southland champion.

Scott won his first New Zealand smallbore title in 1974. In the Commonwealth Games that year, he could not find his best form and his final total of 584 placed him 11th in a 25-strong field. He began disappointingly with a 95, and even though he bounced back with a 100, he was always playing catch-up. The event was won by Australian Yvonne Gowland, with 594. Scott’s team-mate, Ian Ballinger, was 4th.

Scott had an unusual time of it at the 1978 world champs in Korea. On arrival, he found his rifle stock had been broken in half. An American team gunsmith repaired his rifle, but the New Zealander was able to get only one hour of practice before the event and didn’t perform as he’d have liked.

In the 1980 Moscow Olympics trials, Scott equalled the world record for smallbore at 50 metres with a score of 599 and became an automatic selection for the team. After the boycott, an invitation was extended by the Russian authorities to the New Zealand Federation of Labour to attend the Games and Jack was approached by Ken Douglas from the Federation asking if he would be that representative.

Scott wore his official uniform on the trip, which he described as “absolutely fantastic”. Many years later, his son Rex talked him into getting an Olympic rings tattoo on his arm to acknowledge his attendance at those Olympics.

He completed his Games career by competing in the individual and pairs smallbore events at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

Scott finished 18th in the individual event with 1162 points, well behind gold medallist Alan Smith of England on 1184. He combined with Leon Griebel of Blenheim for 9th in the teams section, with 1167 points, 20 points behind gold medallists Malcolm Cooper and Mike Sullivan of England.