A shooting star with a big year ahead

2026-03-03 - 16:07

After a meteoric rise in the world of smallbore rifle shooting, Pippa Taylor is reloading and aiming for new targets in 2026 and beyond. The 17-year-old is into her final year at Queen Margaret College, before hopefully heading off to Massey University from 2027 to study aviation and on to becoming a commercial pilot. In November last year, Taylor and her parents were in the passenger seats for a journey that saw them travel to Cairo for the World Shooting Championships. It was a truly family affair, with Pippa’s father Rob part of the four-strong New Zealand team, and her mother Sarah also travelling as the team’s manager. After the championships were over, the family extended their trip to take in some sightseeing in Egypt. “It was really fun,” says Pippa of the championships. “We were there for 16 days and it was really cool being there with people who are the best in their countries at what they do.” Little more than two years after taking up the sport, Pippa finished 52nd in the women’s 50m rifle prone competition (shooting while lying down), while Rob, who only recently took up the sport again after many years, finished 58th in the men’s equivalent. But before they even arrived, there were logistical challenges to be confronted and overcome, with visas, firearms licences, permits and insurance just a few things on a very long checklist. “It’s a relatively complicated process shooting abroad. Taking guns on a plane is hard, taking guns to the Middle East is harder,” says Rob, who, upon their return, documented the process in an essay called Forward of the Line in an attempt to help shooters who may want to compete overseas in the future. With the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) acting as the governing body, with 159 member federations, it’s a genuinely global sport, which will again take its place at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Sadly, the 50m rifle prone is not part of that timetable. Pippa hadn’t been passionate about any other sport before she started shooting in mid-2023. After hearing it was an option at school, her ears pricked up and when she returned home that afternoon she told Rob that she wanted to learn to shoot. Rob had been a shooter at university in the UK before moving to New Zealand in 2004, and it was something that was on his father/daughter bucket list, despite the fact he hadn’t been involved in the sport for some time. “I couldn’t go to the range without having a go myself, it was just too hard, so then I ended up shooting with her and we’ve had two full seasons now, with the outdoor season in the middle,” says Rob. Rob and Pippa Taylor, taken during training at Cairo in front of the black dots in the distance that are their targets, Photo Supplied/Rob Taylor Joining approximately 1,000 members across more than 120 target shooting clubs in New Zealand, Pippa first of all grappled with whether this was a sport she had to do, as it was part of school, or whether it was something she enjoyed. They started practising at the South Wellington Smallbore Rifle Club in Newtown. “I did enjoy it, but I was really bad at it,” she says “Dad was really good, so it was a bit disheartening to not make any progress, but I just stuck with it.” With things not clicking for Pippa, the pair went to see Cheon Ling, the captain of the Ngaio Smallbore Rifle Club in Khandallah, and that’s when the breakthrough started. “We went there and he gave us different ammunition to try and it solved all my problems,” says Pippa. With separate indoor (April to September) and outdoor (October to March) seasons, there are a wide range of competitions available for shooters, from secondary school to inter-cub, inter-association to North v South interisland matches. In 2024 Pippa decided to see where the sport would take her and started to shoot in open competitions, held around the country. By the end of that year, she had captained the Women’s New Zealand Smallbore Rifle Team, the Junior New Zealand Team, the North Island Junior Team, and the Wellington Secondary Schools Team, in the process holding an impressive nine records; three national, one North Island, and five regionals. She was also named the sport’s Wellington Sportswoman of the Year, an award she also won in 2025. Pippa receiving the NZ Shooter of the Year 2025 from Stephen Patterson, NZ Olympian shooter at Atlanta in 1996. Photo Supplied/Rob Taylor “It’s been a pretty crazy switch, going from concentrating on studying to going out every weekend and competing. It’s hard to balance,” she says. “I’ve loved it so much. Even the hard parts are still fun. Sometimes you have confidence issues but you come out of that dip and I realise that I am still good and you’ve got to keep going.” In the 2025 outdoor season, Pippa’s success continued and she met the minimum qualifying score for the world championships while winning New Zealand’s national championships. With Rob also qualifying for Cairo, they joined fellow Kiwi shooters Mark and Rebecca Baines, who also competed in the 50m prone on the world stage. With such a big academic year ahead, Pippa is unsure how much competition she’ll be able to achieve in 2026. International travel has already been ruled out, but open competitions are a possibility, as is the North v South inter-island match in Howick in mid-August. If she heads to Massey University as planned, she’s keen to start a shooting club with some of her friends that she currently competes with, as they will be studying there too, which means a full circle moment for the Taylor family after Rob’s entry into the sport, might be just around the corner. “I would love to. With Dad starting his shooting at university, it would be great to start a club when I go there.”