Top picture is silver medalist Thomas Paine from the 1896 Summer games, the first year with a shooting competition. Bottom is gold medalist Vitalina Batsarashkina from the 2020 games.
https://www.ssusa.org/content/athens-1896-olympics-the-first-shots-for-record/
They are relegated to a single hand grip.
And match grade ammo out of ludicrously well balanced, specialized pistols.
Which is really weird, because that grip looks hugely, uncomfortably oversized. Of course, form follows function, and a single specific function means that requirements like “being able to hold on while moving around” falls along the wayside compared to supreme accuracy.
It is kind of hard to tell from the lighting and relatively low quality of that image, but here are some other pics of a similar match grade competition style grip pistols:
(I think the first image may actually be the weapon, or quite a similar model, as the female pistoleer in OPs image)
As you can hopefully see (i am on shit tier 4g, the images may have borked mid upload), you’re looking at basically a block of… some kind of more exotic wood, where if you just buy a pistol like this off the shelf it will already feature extremely accentuated grip molding to an average hand, and i have personally seen people at ranges with their own custom carved grips to fit exactly their hand and grip style.
I am unsure if at say the Olympic level you are allowed a totally custom grip like that, but for regional and state level stuff, I’ve seen it a good deal.
The second image is very similar to a weapon I was allowed to handle and fire at a range at one point, I believe it was either the range master or owner of the range’s old competition pistol. He was impressed by my accuracy with a piece of shit .22lr carbine during a familiarization course, and let me try out his old thing for a few shots.
It looks like a damn wooden brick for a grip, but you pick it up and it just makes so much sense, balances so easily for the one handed style. And yeah, though the compensator looks like it belongs on a damn sniper rifle, it really is just a massive overkill compensator for .22lr for maximum stability while firing.
You get the chunk at the base of the grip, or sometimes in other parts of the grip, left purely to balance the weight of the weapon.
These things are just single shot, there is no magazine well inside the grip.
These weapons are utterly impractical for self defense, theyre one shot, cant fit into any sane holster and usually fire .22 or .17 or sometimes are not even proper firearms and are actually air guns.
But you can be ludicrously accurate with them.
These are not intended for two handed grips. The recoil is tiny, and you dont need to get multiple shots off rapidly, so you dont have room for or a need for a second hand to control the pistol.
When you are just using one hand, you want all the surface area you can get.