LOTS of competitive sports as we have them now came from the military. Shooting, fencing, riding, etc were all basically dominated by military and winning contests was seen as a great historical way of showing your country’s military prowess.

There are also used to be WAY more olympic shooting sports, including moving targets, animal-shaped moving targets, etc etc. Hell, one of the biggest horse-riding championships here in the Netherlands is called “Military” (the english word, because dutch people love stealing words from other languages).