Athletes are encouraged to cast their votes for the ISSF Athletes Committee during the ISSF World Championship in Changwon (KOR) between the 2nd and the 11th of September.
The elections for the new ISSF Athletes Committee will take place during the 52nd ISSF World Championship in all events in Changwon (KOR).
All accredited athletes in the senior categories are encouraged to cast their vote. The election will be held at the Changwon Shooting Range, at the Athletes Election Booth, right by the ISSF Shop. Voting will be possible every day from September 2nd at 8:30 am to September 11th at 4:00 pm, local time.
Twenty-one athletes were suggested by ISSF Member Federations as possible candidates. The prerequisites to become a candidate are never to be found guilty of a doping offense and to have participated at the last Olympic Games or at previous or present ISSF World Championship. Details about the candidates as well as information concerning the procedure are available here.
The four athletes gaining the most votes will automatically become part of the ISSF Athletes Committee. The three remaining athletes and the Committee’s Chairman will be appointed at the next ISSF Executive Committee Meeting.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the ISSF Headquarters at munich@issf-sports.org.
The objective is to work closely with athletes and the ISSF to voice opinions and
to establish a direct link with the athletes and the ISSF.
WHOM TO ELECT
21 athletes were suggested by ISSF Member Federations as possible
candidates. The prerequisites to become a candidate are never to be found
guilty of a doping offence and to have participated at the last Olympic Games or
at previous or present World Championships. Please see the list of candidates.
HOW IT WORKS
Each accredited athlete in the senior (open) categories can visit the Athletes
Election Booth and will receive a voting card with the proposed candidates. After
voting, each athlete will receive a USB flash drive. A maximum of four (4) votes
per voting card and athlete is possible. Each athlete can only vote once. The
four athletes holding the most votes will automatically be part of the ISSF
Athletes Committee. The remaining three athletes with their Chairman will be
appointed at the next ISSF Executive Committee Meeting.
WHERE TO GET AND DROP THE VOTING CARDS
The voting cards have to be obtained and immediately be dropped at the
Athletes Election Booth (ISSF Shop).
TIME AND DEADLINE
You can vote daily from 2nd September (8.30 a.m.) to 11th September (4 p.m.
local time). If the booth is closed please come back later.
ELECTION ISSF ATHLETES COMMITTEE
The following athletes are standing for election:
52nd ISSF World Championship All Events · Changwon, KOR
The Korean city will welcome more than 1800 shooters, representing 90 nations and piling up almost 3500 starts. The first title will be awarded on September 2nd, while the last one will be delivered on September 14th.
The 52nd edition of the ISSF World Championship in all events is about to start in Changwon (KOR): the competition will go down from August 31st to September 15th. Most of the events will take place at the newly built Changwon International Shooting Range — the same venue that hosted this year’s ISSF World Cup in April — while the 300m events will be contested at the Jinhae Naval Shooting Range.
A total of 1806 shooters will participate in the competition, representing 90 National Olympic Committees and piling up 3457 starts in 66 events and five disciplines: Rifle, Pistol, Shotgun, Running Target and Target Sprint.
The first titles of the championship will be awarded on September 2nd in the 10m Air Rifle Mixed Team and 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team events, two of the three new events that were recently added to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Programme. Indeed, the ISSF World Championship in Changwon will also distribute a total of 60 Olympic quota places in the 15 Olympic Shooting events: four per each of the 12 individual events and two per each of the three mixed team ones.
The complete schedule of the championship is available here.
The competition will seal the 2018 ISSF Season, which opened last March in Guadalajara (MEX) with the first of the six stages of the 2018 ISSF World Cup Series.
Aug 26, 2018, 06:56 IST | Ashwin Ferro A cluttered mind and off-field issues may have led to record-breaking teen shooter's blank show at Asian Games; workload factor cant be ruled out too
When Manu Bhaker, 16, won her maiden gold medal at the ISSF Shooting World Cup in Guadalajara, Mexico in March this year, her family members, friends and neighbours back home in Goria village of Haryana’s Jhajjhar district were over the moon. However, junior national coach Jaspal Rana, was worried that she might not be able to maintain this form across a longer period having won a medal so early in her career.
Pressure game Rana, a four-time Asian Games gold medal-winning pistol ace, hit bullseye. At the Asian Games here, Manu, who entered three events — mixed team, 10m air pistol and 25m pistol — has drawn a blank. A young mind often wanders. However, in Manu’s case, the mind may have been bogged down by pressure beyond the shooting range.
In the run-up to the Asian Games, India’s former World No 1 pistol shooter Heena Sidhu had lashed out at the National Rifles Association of India (NRAI) for picking Manu over her for the mixed team event. She even met NRAI chief Raninder Singh regarding the issue but the federation cited Manu’s Commonwealth Games gold medal in their selection.
In the Asian Games mixed team event, Manu and Abhishek Verma failed to even reach the finals. In her second event, 25m pistol, Manu shot a Games record of 593 in qualifying, but finished sixth in the final. And finally on Friday, Manu qualified for the final of the 10m air pistol event in third place, but ended up fifth.
If the selection controversy wasn’t enough, Manu, in an interview with AFP, before these Games said she had banned her parents from coming on foreign tours because they put restrictions on her eating and behaviour.
Her struggle with this new-found fame evoked a response from India’s only individual Olympic gold medal-winning shooter Abhinav Bindra. "Dear Manu — this is the life you have signed on for. It’s your choice. These are not sacrifices, this is a privileged life," Bindra wrote on Twitter.
On the personal front, Manu is like any teenager. Her father Ramkishen says she enjoys watching cartoons Chhota Bheem and Tom & Jerry and relishes chocolates. Now, sweets are a no-no in a sport like shooting where every pulse counts. So, the restrictions could have hit her here too. India’s shot gun coach Mansher Singh felt young shooters deserve a free hand. "They should be allowed to do what they want if it helps them relax before a competition," he said.
Burnout problem NRAI’s Observer for rifle and pistol event Ronak Pandit felt burnout is a major issue for a shooter’s dip in form given the amount of junior and senior shooting events world over besides selection trials and domestic competitions. "But younger shooters can recover better," said Pandit.
Manu’s mentor and junior national pistol coach Jaspal Rana felt she will bounce back: "We will sit and have a talk. She must be prepared to take failure in her stride. I’m confident she will start shooting well again." Manu heads to Changwon, Korea for the ISSF World Championships (August 31 to September 14) next hoping her pistol starts talking before she has to face some tough questions.
Catch up on all the latest sports news and updates here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates
The phrase “end of an era” is much overused, particularly in sport. Yet one has little hesitation in applying it to the change at the top that is about to take place in shooting.
On November 30, an election is scheduled to be held during meetings of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) in Munich to choose a new President to follow in Olegario Vázquez Raña’s king-sized footprints.
The Mexican is stepping down at the age of almost 84, after occupying the post since 1980, the year in which Ronald Reagan was elected United States President and Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
With some three months to go, he is expected to be succeeded by Russian steel tycoon Vladimir Lisin. Vázquez Raña named Lisin, who is European Shooting Confederation President, earlier this year as his preferred candidate to take over.
In view of this impending exit, it seemed an appropriate time for insidethegames to approach Vázquez Raña, who was also an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member for 20 years until 2015, to reflect on his six decades or more of dedication to this longstanding Olympic sport.
Like so much in life, it turns out his involvement began by chance. “I started shooting in the 1950s,” he remembers. “A friend of mine, an engineer, invited me to dinner at his place on a Saturday night. There, I saw he had many trophies on display, and I asked him about it.
"It turned out that he was a shooter. I was curious about the sport, so he invited me to a competition on the following Sunday morning.
"I had never fired a shot before in my life, but I really wanted to try, so I entered a 150-metre rifle-shooting competition. Somebody explained to me how to shoot and I gave it a go.
"Later, when the judges had calculated the scores, the speaker called my name for a tie-breaker for the first and second. That was one of the biggest surprises of my life; I could not believe it.
"I went into the tie-breaker, I had a bit of luck, and I won it. I won the gold medal on my first try.
"That was the first time I touched a gun in my life.
"People said I was gifted; they encouraged me to start practising the sport, and indeed I started training. I fell in love with shooting sport.
"I was already a busy businessman in those days, so I trained in the morning - from 5.30 or 6am until eight o’clock, because at nine I had to be at my desk.
"After six or seven years, I became the best rifle shooter in Mexico. I broke all records and won all matches.
"In 1973, I won the Confederation of the Americas Shooting Championship in Mexico City with a new air-rifle world record of 392 points. Two years later, in 1975, I won the Pan American Games.”
The longstanding Mexican official was re-elected for another
Vázquez Raña nominates this victory, in which he broke his own world record, as one of the proudest moments of his career as an athlete. He also participated in every Olympic Games between Tokyo 1964 and Montreal 1976. This latter event, in which he placed tenth in a small-bore rifle discipline, was where IOC President Thomas Bach picked up his Olympic fencing gold medal.
Given his extensive business interests, how I wondered, besides rising early, had Vázquez Raña managed to strike a balance? He begins by sketching out some of his family history.
"My father and mother came to Mexico from Spain at the turn of the previous century,” he tells me. “My father worked a lot and the family grew. We were five brothers and one sister.
"Four of us founded a company named Grupo Hermanos Vázquez [Vázquez Brothers] that grew to become one of the most important companies in the country in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. That is where I started developing my business to what is now Grupo Empresarial Angeles.”
Then he produces the answer: “I was able to balance business, sport and family through discipline.
"I believe firmly in discipline, and discipline has been a part of my life since I was a kid.
"I lived most of my life as if I were in the military.
"I trained early in the morning, then worked all day, and finally competed during the weekends. My family always followed me.
"My wife, son and daughters have seen most of the world’s shooting ranges, accompanying me during my years as an athlete. Now my son, Olegario Vázquez Aldir, has assumed the important roles in our companies.
"At the same time, my family, and especially my wife, continue traveling with me around the world for our sport meetings and championships.”
Was he as much of a natural as a sports politician as he had been a shooting athlete? In short, not quite: “I was never interested in becoming part of the leadership of the federation,” he recalls. “I was in love with the sport as an active athlete, and that was all.”
Then came the change.
"In 1978 I was competing in the ISSF World Championship in Seoul," he says. "There I was also entered as a delegate for Mexico in the General Assembly held during the championship. That was my first time in an Assembly and I was impressed by the organisation of the meetings.
"As the meeting started, the President and secretary general started a long discussion between themselves about some budgeting issues. This was a technical discussion which was of no interest for the 400 delegates in the hall.
"I raised my hand, asked to speak and expressed my point of view on the situation. I brought their attention back to the important issues: the rules, the competitions, the real problems concerning the athletes. I told them they should listen to the delegates and not discuss internal problems.
"Many delegates liked my speech and later on I was asked to become a candidate for the Presidency.”
It was at a General Assembly in his native Mexico City in February 1980 that Vázquez Raña became President, at the age of 45. He secured 125 of the 132 votes present. I wondered if there was a particular promise that delegates had appreciated.
"I don’t think I made any special promises,” he declares. “I believe that it was the right time for a change.
"I arrived with a lot of experience as an active and successful athlete. At the same time I brought my business experience into the administration of the sport.
"Managing the funds in a proper, professional and transparent manner has always been a priority for me. My team also played an important role. I am referring to secretary general Horst Schreiber [also elected in 1980] and José Antonio Fernández Arena, who helped me in the lead-up to the elections.”
The Mexican has since served a total of nine terms as President, though he faced a tough fight in 2014, beating Kuwait’s Sheikh Salman Sabah Al-Salem Al-Homoud Al-Sabah by 165 votes to 128. What achievements is he proudest of in these nearly four decades in office?
"Shooting has always been a traditional sport,” he replies. “I modernised the sport, its competition formats, its procedures and scoring systems, securing its Olympic status.
"Under my Presidency, we introduced finals (prior to that it took hours to declare the winners), the World Cup series, the Olympic quota system (we were the first!), electronic scoring systems and the mixed team events. We attained full gender equality in the Olympic programme, and so much more.
"It has not been easy. It took a long time. But I am sure I am leaving a healthy sport and a healthy federation.”
Sports administration runs in the family as the late Mario Vázquez Raña
Some would say it is not healthy to have the same leader for so long, I observe.
"I have been confirmed as President mandate after mandate because I worked for the athletes, I worked for the sport, a sport I love,” he responds. “I strengthened the position of shooting sport within the Olympic family.
"At the same time, I modernised the sport. I was re-elected always thanks to the support of the shooting sport family.
"But now it is time to retire; I gave most of my life to this sport and I want now to spend more time with my family. Shooting will always be part of my life and of my dreams, but it is now time for me to retire.
"It is a difficult decision, but as I said, I believe in discipline.
"I am a man who makes firm decisions.”
Schreiber remained as secretary general for three decades until his death in 2010. What, I wondered, were the qualities the German brought that enabled he and Vázquez Raña to work in tandem for so long?
The ISSF President replies that his “dear friend and partner” was “a well-prepared German lawyer. He was a strong man whose administrative skills proved very important during those years.
"He was very good at executing decisions, an exceptional problem-solver and he was respected by all who worked with him.
"Mr Schreiber was also a person I could talk to.
"I don’t like yes-men and I had several open discussions with him. Sometimes he was right; sometimes he wasn’t. In the end, we worked very well together. He was more than a colleague. He became a brother to me.”
One of his flesh and blood brothers - the late Mario Vázquez Raña - was a towering figure in international sport in the Juan Antonio Samaranch era and beyond, serving as President of the Association of National Olympic Committees for 33 years and of the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) for 40. Yet I developed the firm impression that the two brothers did not get on. Was this correct, or an unfounded rumour?
Russian tycoon Vladimir Lisin, seen here with Vladimir Putin, is the favourite
Vázquez Raña appears to answer carefully, but candidly. "We always had a deep love for each other, even though we didn’t always agree,” he says.
“We each had a different style in regards to leadership, but we always respected each other. I am sure that healthy competition allowed us to do our best to succeed.”
Shooting is one of those sports where there seems little reason (at least to non-specialists such as myself) why men and women should not compete directly against one another. In the interests of gender equality, three men’s Olympic events are set to be replaced by mixed team competitions at Tokyo 2020. I thought it would be interesting to ask Vázquez Raña to reflect on how attitudes to competition between and among the sexes had evolved during his long involvement with the sport.
"In the past,” he explains, “women and men competed together, in open events. We all remember the victory of the Chinese female shooter Zhang Shan in the open skeet event at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
"That competition format had worked until then, but not for all events and not for all nations. After lengthy research and analysis by our experts, we decided to establish separate women’s events in order to increase female participation by offering more opportunities to compete at all levels.
"That proved to be a success as female participation increased. That being said, I always embraced the idea of gender equality, and therefore when Agenda 2020 was released I committed to it fully.
"We wanted to achieve full gender equality by Tokyo 2020, retaining our fifteen Olympic shooting events, and at the same time guaranteeing parity among the disciplines of rifle, pistol and shotgun.
"Mixed team events were the best solution to achieve it – and also to reflect grass-roots sport and youth events. We should not forget that we introduced mixed team shooting events in the Youth Olympic Games well before Agenda 2020.”
The sport has undergone numerous changes since the Mexican first took
Finally, I felt I needed to pose a question related to guns’ essential raison d’être as lethal weapons. What does the soon-to-depart ISSF President say to those who argue that it is no longer appropriate for a sport dependent on such dangerous weapons to be on the Olympic programme?
"We are an Olympic sport that is practiced in more than 160 countries by millions of people,” he tells me, adding: “Our sport is one of the safest in the world, and it is practiced respecting the law and taking environmental precautions in areas and venues designed specifically for its practice.
"We are subject to controls and safety procedures at all levels, from international authorities down to referees on the range.
"Our guns are not dangerous weapons; they are sports equipment, not much different from a bow or a javelin.”
PALEMBANG, Indonesia, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- China's shooter Wang Qian has set an Asian Games record in the women's 10m air pistol as she scored 240.3 points to take the gold medal on Friday.
Wang has demonstrated consistent performances since the qualification rounds in the Jakabaring Sport City (JSC) shooting range, peaking the rank of 43 shooters with a total point of 570.
"I am glad that I can perform good here," the 25-year-old seeded no. 7 by International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) said on the sidelines of the medal ceremony.
Wang's victory has reinstated China's domination in the 18th Asian Games shooting sports with a total of seven gold medals so far.
The silver and bronze medals went to Kim Min-jung of South Korea and Heena Sidhu of India in 237.6 and 219.2 respectively.
Wang was the runner-up of 2018 ISSF World Cup held in Munich, Germany in May this year where South Korea's Kim Min-ju placed third.
CHN
KOR
IND