Champions > Mike Martel

MIKE MARTEL

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One of Guernsey’s most accomplished marksmen, Mike’s contribution to Guernsey shooting simply cannot be overstated.

Mike won the Guernsey Island Championship five times, and represented the island at the Commonwealth Games in Canada in 1978 and Edinburgh in 1986.

Mike, aged 28, being held in the chair by his fellow Guernseymen after winning his second Island crown in 1967. He would go on to win a further three Island Championship titles.

Notwithstanding those successes, it was Bisley where Mike set himself apart. He made 56 appearances in the Kolapore – more than any competitor from any nation – and made a Guernsey-record 18 appearances in the final of HM The Queen’s Prize, the first and last of which spanned some 54 years between 1961 and 2015.

Perhaps his greatest individual success was his St George’s win in 1968 – the last with a .303 rifle – followed by the Bronze Medal for winning the first stage of the Queen’s in 1969.

Mike, aged 29, photographed with the St George’s Vase, the Dragon Cup and the St George’s Gold Cross in 1968.

Mike won the St George’s first stage in 1976 and amassed 12 finishes in the top fifty of the Grand Aggregate, his best finish of 8th coming in 1990. In 2004, Mike won the Queen’s Veterans.

Mike started shooting at Elizabeth College in the 1950s. He shot for the VIII in the various public schools’ competitions, winning the Staniforth Cup in 1956 and placing second in the Ashburton in 1957.

Mike (front row, seated second from left), aged 20, part of Guernsey’s Kolapore team, 1959.

Shortly thereafter, Mike formed part of the Old Elizabethan Rifle Club team that won the 1960 Astor County Championship for Hampshire.

He would later win the Astor on multiple occasions with Manydown Rifle Club, again for Hampshire. A teacher for much of his life at schools across the county, where he settled with his wife Manuela, Mike won the Hampshire County Championship in 2012, aged 73.

Mike, aged 73, with a framed letter from the Bailiff of Guernsey, Sir Richard Collas, congratulating him on his 50th appearance for Guernsey in the Kolapore in 2012.

Mike won both the Junior Mackinnon and Junior Overseas several times with Guernsey in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and, in 2006, captained the Channel Islands Rifle Team to an historic win over England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Germany at the European Long Range Championships at Bisley.

Mike (second from left), aged 24, part of the victorous Guernsey Junior Mackinnon team in 1963.

More than his many achievements, Mike was a true gentleman of our sport. Fondly remembered by all who met him, he never had a bad word to say about anybody. He always had time for others and dedicated so much of that time helping others to partake and succeed in the sport he had loved over a lifetime.

Text by Charlie Brewin, last updated 2024.