Donald Mackintosh

Donald Mackintosh (22 September 1866 – 8 September 1951) was an Australian professional sports shooter. He shot on the European live-bird pigeon shooting circuit between 1896 and 1908, winning numerous prizes and recognition as a world champion. In 1992, he was posthumously awarded Olympic gold and bronze medals for pigeon-shooting events deemed to form part of the 1900 Summer Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later reversed its decision and reclassified the events as non-Olympic.

Personal life Mackintosh was born on 22 September 1866 in Rockbank, Victoria. He was the son of James and Isabella Mackintosh, who had immigrated to Australia from Scotland.

Mackintosh married Elizabeth Hartwell of Hobart on 6 October 1900. Their only son Donald James Roy Mackintosh was born in 1902, but died of measles in Menton, France, in December 1907.

In 1890, Mackintosh won the Melbourne Gun Club £1000 Cup Handicap, killing 33 birds in a row. He also won the club's £50 Challenge Cup three years in a row. His success allowed him to earn a living as a professional shooter, and he travelled around Australia participating in competitions. with the Paris sporting journal Jockey writing that "Mackintosh's performances at Monte Carlo, together with his records made in England and Australia, are such that, in a word, we declare him the champion of the world". He was said to have won 30 gold medals and over £20,000 in prize money, equivalent to approximately A$4 million in 2014. There was no official team or selection process, and each man raised their own funds to compete.

Mackintosh entered two live-pigeon shooting events at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, which was held simultaneously with the Olympics. These have been described by historian David Wallechinsky as "the only time in Olympic history when animals were killed on purpose". The first was the Grand Prix du Centenaire, which was held from 19 to 20 June and attracted 166 competitors. Mackintosh shot 22 birds in a row, one more than the Spanish runner-up; each shooter was eliminated after missing one bird. In the second event, the Grand Prix de l'Exposition held from 25 to 27 June, he tied for third place by shooting 18 consecutive pigeons, three behind the winner Léon de Lunden. When all but the last four shooters had been eliminated, the remaining competitors agreed to split the prize money equally between them. As a result, they each received 7,340 francs.

Mackintosh and the other pigeon-shooters did not regard themselves as Olympians, and he was initially omitted from Olympic reference works. In 1956, Hungarian historian Ferenc Mező was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to compile a comprehensive list of Olympic champions. Mező included Mackintosh as a gold medallist, but incorrectly listed the event as archery rather than shooting. This error was not brought to the attention of the IOC until 1987, when Australian historians Reet and Max Howell conducted further research. However, the IOC did not formally confirm Mackintosh as an Olympic gold medallist in shooting until 1992, following a visit from the AOC's official historian Harry Gordon to IOC headquarters.

In 2012, The Australian reported that the IOC had "quietly removed" Mackintosh from its list of Olympic medallists, without informing the AOC. This reclassification means that Patricia Dench is now officially regarded as Australia's first Olympic shooting medallist, for a bronze medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Later years in Australia

Mackintosh decided to retire from competitive shooting after his son's death in 1907. He and his wife left Italy in September 1908 and returned to Australia, where he opened his own gun shop. Mackintosh was posthumously inducted into the ACTA Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1987.