International Shooting Sport Federation


The International Shooting Sport Federation is the governing body of Olympic shooting events. It also regulates several non-Olympic shooting sport events. The Federation's activities include regulation of the sport, managing Olympic qualification events and quota places, and organisation of tournaments like the World Cup and World Championships.
The ISSF was founded in 17 July 1907 This international shooting federation was dissolved in 1916. After World War I the international body was founded as Union Internationale de Tir by among others Gerard van den Bergh. The name changed to its current name in 1998. The Federation affiliates more than 150 National Shooting Federation. The ISSF headquarters is in Munich, Germany. Since 2022, the ISSF Presidency has been held by, a former Italian Senator and head of the Italian Clay Pigeon Federation.
After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ISSF banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions. In March 2023, the new president Luciano Rossi of Italy expressed his desire to reinstate Russian and Belarusian athletes so they can compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Tournaments

The ISSF recognizes the following competitions as ISSF Championships:
These are the only competitions that have direct supervision from ISSF committees, and the only competitions where world records can be set. This leads to many national records in fact being higher than the world records.
NumberEventsFirstLast
1World Championships18972023
2World Cup19862024
3Junior World Championships20172021
4Junior World Cup20162022
5World University Championships20032018
6World Military Championships19572017

Disciplines

The ISSF currently sanctions five groups of shooting sport disciplines: Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, Running Target and Target Sprint. Running Target and Target Sprint both utilise rifles, but are contested separately from the conventional Rifle events as Running Target uses moving targets, and Target Sprint uses hit/miss scoring in a biathlon-like event. Many ranges equipped for conventional rifle and pistol events are not equipped for Running Target or Target Sprint.
The overview of disciplines includes only the distinct discipline itself. Some may have both men's and women's events, just one or the other, or else have variations including team shoots. These are not listed separately.

Pistol

ISSF Pistol events use a mix of cartridge and air pistols. Targets are static black circles, with scoring based on scoring rings. Timed events originally used turning frames to show or hide targets. However these now use static targets with red and green lights to indicate when shots may be fired. As most high level events now use electronic target systems, the target system will ignore or penalise shots fired early or late. This reduces the incidence of mechanical faults with the frame mechanism, which could require reshoots and affect the competition programme.

Olympic Events

ISSF Rifle events use a mix of cartridge and air rifles. Targets are static black circles, with scoring based on scoring rings.

Olympic Events

  • 10M Air Rifle - Slow-fire precision event using a.177 calibre air rifle
  • 50M Three-Position Rifle - Slow-fire precision event using a.22lr single-shot rifle with Kneeling, Prone and Standing phases

    Non-Olympic Events

  • 50M Prone Rifle - Slow-fire precision event using a.22lr single-shot rifle
  • 300M Prone Rifle - Slow-fire precision event using a single-shot centre-fire rifle
  • 300M Three-Position Rifle - Slow-fire precision event using a single-shot centre-fire rifle with Kneeling, Prone and Standing phases

    Shotgun

Olympic Events

ISSF Running Target events uses a mix of cartridge and air rifles. Targets are moving black circles, with scoring based on scoring rings. No Running Target events are contested at the Olympic Games.
uses 0.177 air rifles. Targets are static black circles, with scoring based on hits/misses. Similar to Biathlon, Target Sprint involves running phases, interspersed with shooting. Unlike Biathlon, all shooting is done standing with no prone shoots. Additionally, rifles are not carried by the athlete whilst running and are left in a rack on the firing point.
No Target Sprint events are contested at the Olympic Games.

History

Development of shooting sports

Target shooting sports developed rapidly through the second half of the 19th century as a side effect of national security concerns. The National Rifle Association was founded in London in 1859 with the aim of raising funds for a shooting competition to promote marksmanship amongst the Volunteer movement. Similar organisations and events such as Frivilliga Skytterörelsen developed across the world, particularly in Europe and European colonies. By 1900, target shooting was well established as a popular recreational sport. Disciplines varied from one nation to another, often relevant to the service rifles in domestic use. For instance, fullbore target rifle was common across the British Empire.

First Olympiad and early 20th century

Shooting was included in the first modern Olympic Games. Held in Athens in 1896, 39 shooters from seven nations competed in three pistol and two rifle events; they grew to 139 shooters from 13 nations in the following edition of the Games, held in Paris in 1900.
On 17 July 1907, representatives of seven national shooting federations, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands met in Zurich, Switzerland, to formally establish L'Union Internationale des Fédérations et Associations nationals de Tir, International Union of National Shooting Federations and Associations in English. That meeting would be remembered as the first ISSF General Assembly. Daniel Mérillon, a French lawyer from Paris, was elected as the first ISSF President.
Following the desire of the first ISSF leaders to make their organization a world sport institution, more national federations joined L'Unione Internationale in the ensuing years: in 1912, 284 shooters coming from 16 different countries participated in the Games of the V Olympiad. In 1916, World War I caused the cancellation of the Olympic Games and every shooting international event, and under the influence of President Mérillon, the Union of National Shooting folded.
In 1920 President Mérillon invited representative of the previous members and from the countries established after the world war to come to a meeting in Paris on 16 April 1920, with the intent to renew ISSF activities. Delegates from 14 countries attended the meeting and agreed to re-establish the ISSF under the name L'Union Internationale de Tir, and Daniel Mérillon was re-elected President of the Union. In the first Olympic Games after the hiatus, held in Antwerp in the same year, 233 athletes from 18 nations participated in 21 shooting events. The following year, 1921, the International Olympic Committee, declared that the ISSF regulations were to govern the shooting events in the next Olympic Games: this was the first concrete step in forging a union between the ISSF and the IOC, a step that was to have such a profound impact on the Federation's future.
A crisis between the ISSF and the IOC happened between years 1926 and 1928: the practice of awarding money prizes in ISSF Championships clashed with the rigid amateur standards of the IOC, causing the Committee to exclude shooting from the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. After a formal appeal, in 1932 shooting was re-included in the Olympic program, but the number of events was widely reduced and many of the world's best marksmen were missing because they were labeled incompatible with the IOC amateur standards. A small sample of shooting events was present in the 1936 Berlin Olympic program, while the following year Catherine Woodring became the first woman to fire in a UIT World Championship event.
1940 marks another break in the history of Olympic Games and shooting, as the 2nd World War exploded. The federal books, with records and archives were transported from Paris to Stockholm, in a neutral country. After the conclusion of the world conflict, in 1947, eight members agreed on holding a World Championship and a General Assembly in Stockholm, where Erik Carlsson was elected as the third president of the ISSF history.

Late 20th century

The Pan-American Games and the Asian Games were both created, on their respective continents, as multi-sport international competitions, in 1951, and shooting was accepted in both. Since that year, Pan-Am Games and Asian Games have been staged every four years, with shooting always present in the program. Since 1954, the ISSF started adopting a four-year cycle for its World Championship. In 1966 the UIT decided to recognize its events as mixed ones, allowing women to compete alongside men in every official competition, including the 1968 Olympic Games and their three following editions.
In 1976 Hasler, after serving the ISSF for sixteen years, stepped down from the presidency, opening the way for his First Vice President George Vichos, whose administration lasted four years: during the ISSF General Assembly of the XXII Olympiad, held in Mexico City, Olegario Vázquez Raña emerged as the leading candidate for the presidency. The Mexican, an active shooter with four Olympic Games and five World Championship participations, was elected in February 1980, with 125 out of 132 votes in his favor. The 1980 General Assembly also elected Horst G. Schreiber, a prominent attorney in Munich, Germany, as the new Secretary General.
The constant growth of the member federations to over 100 changed the needs of the ISSF, leading the new leadership to the promotion of a new ISSF Constitution, drafted and approved in an Extraordinary General Assembly happened in Moscow in 1980. The new Constitution transferred the technical rule making authority to the Administrative Council, increased the authority of the ISSF Section Committees and strengthened the Federation's financial accountability. It also established the ISSF Women's Committee, that replaced the provisional 1977's Ladies Committee.
In 1984 Unni Nicolaysen became the first woman in the 77-year-old history of the Federation to be elected as a member of the Administrative Council. That same year, the IOC added three women's events to the Olympic shooting program.
Two years later, at the suggestion of the IOC, the ISSF developed an Olympic qualification system, establishing a new series of World Cups, including them in the system and recognizing their scores as potential World Records. The first ISSF Rifle and Pistol World Cup was held in Mexico City in March 1986, followed by the first ISSF Shotgun World Cup, held in Montecatini, Italy, in April. Since 1986, ISSF World Cup has been played on a yearly basis, always leading to an ISSF World Cup Final where shooters with the best scores were invited to compete in an elite competition at the end of each season. 25 junior events were added to the Championship programs in 1994.
During the General Assembly held in Barcelona in 1998, the word sport was formally incorporated into the Federation's name, changing it into the current International Shooting Sport Federation. Between 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games, three women's events were added to the program.