Ex-India shooter Sharif disagrees with P Gopichand: 'Sport not just about winning medals and making careers'

In February this year news of a partnership between the ISSF Academy and former Indian shooter Shimon Sharif made headlines all over. The ISSF Academy, which is dedicated to providing coaching education to shooting coaches all over the world chose to partner with Sharif because of his decades-long association with the sport, along with the fact that he runs a very successful shooting website – the first website dedicated to shooting that was launched in India, even before the governing body of shooting in India, the NRAI, launched their website.

According to the latest available data from the ISSF, up to 40 per cent of the coaches who have signed up for the latest ISSF Academy course are Indians. As Shimon mentions in this interview, earlier it was very difficult for Indian shooting coaches to obtain ISSF licenses because that meant foreign travelling and spending a lot of money. Now, everything is online.

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Over the years a lot has changed in the Indian shooting landscape. From Rajyavardhan Rathore winning the silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics to Manu Bhaker becoming the first athlete from independent India to win two medals in a single edition of the Olympics – Indian shooting has been riding an upward curve for a while. But what are the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the momentum is not lost?

In this interview Shimon, who also runs a very successful shooting academy, talks exclusively with Firstpost about the ins and outs of his partnership with the ISSF Academy, some of the policy changes, including import policy that made it easier for sport shooters in India to follow their passion, how the situation can be made even better, what is working and also some things that are affecting our shooters in a negative way. He also talks about Bhaker and what he thinks went wrong for Indian shooters in the 2016 and 2021 Olympic Games, where Indian shooters didn’t win a single medal.

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This is part one of an exclusive interview with Shimon Sharif.

Firstpost: You were the first rifle-shooter from Delhi to represent India at an ISSF World Cup and now the ISSF has begun a direct partnership with you. The main aim of this partnership from the ISSF point of view is to raise coaching standards in India. It’s an exciting new development for Indian shooting, which has had quite an upward curve for a while now, barring a few hiccups here and there. Tell us more about how this partnership came to be and what the main details are…

Shimon Sharif: The ISSF Academy is the coaching division of the ISSF. They are the only recognised arm of the ISSF that provides shooting sport coaching education worldwide and also grants the ISSF coaching license, which make coaches around the world eligible to give professional coaching and even become national team coaches of other countries. Earlier the coaching education was being provided by the ISSF in-house. That made it a little difficult for the Indian coaches – to travel abroad, attend the coaching programmes, spend a lot of money and stay there for long periods of time. These are lengthy courses, so obviously a very few could do that.

Congratulations to ISSF Academy on their 1st Anniversary! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/kOaE2m075j

— Shimon Sharif (@ShimonSharif) March 10, 2025

Now, this is an online programme initiated by the ISSF Academy. It’s a 12-week long programme, where the trainees are required to spend approximately five hours weekly. There will be weekly live online lectures, with recorded sessions for flexible learning. There will be practical range visits once a week to apply coaching techniques. The coaches can go to a local shooting range for that practical range visit (wherever they are based). The coaches will also get access to online learning platforms for assignments and resources. Obviously, the trainees will need to have a shooting background – not a very high level performing shooter, but someone who has a background in shooting.

I happened to meet the ISSF Academy bosses during the ISSF World Cup final in Delhi last year – that’s where this idea was born. We decided to have a tie-up, a collaboration in which we will talk to the coaches in India and motivate and help them to undergo this coaching course and also help them to obtain their coaching license. You have to understand – in the last National Championships there were 13,522 shooters – a record-breaking number at a National Championship which went on for over two months.

With these kinds of numbers (of participating shooters) there is a need for very good coaches in the country. Not everybody has played at the Olympics, or a World Cup or a World Championship, but there are so many shooters who have taken part in the Nationals and coaching in shooting is a great fallback career for a shooter, because not everybody makes it to the national squad or to the Indian team, and get the support and sponsorship etc. and make it big. To help these shooters to become more technically sound and to have that correct knowledge of providing coaching and to obtain the license – that is where this idea of collaborating with the ISSF Academy came up.

FP: Overall, of course, shooting is an extremely mental sport. Talk to me about that aspect of the course and what else it looks at covering so that the shooters are more empowered in the future…

SS: There are a set of techniques that you know that you need to master as an athlete, but when you try and teach those techniques to somebody it requires a different level of learning. The coaching courses are not just about shooting skills, they also cover aspects of mental training in a very scientific manner. There have been instances where our shooters, because of lack of knowledge, have landed up in problems according to the WADA rules. They have been banned and spent time outside the sport for up to two years and that can really spoil someone’s career. These were small mistakes because people didn’t have the knowledge.

Most of the shooters are training at the private shooting ranges. They are not even aware (perhaps) of the NRAI or the state federations when they first start learning the sport. There are about one thousand private shooting ranges right now in India. These are the places where someone is first introduced to the sport. So, it’s very important for the local coaches at these private shooting ranges to have that kind of knowledge, because laying a strong foundation is very important. A shooter will first train for a year or two a private shooting range and only then can he or she be good enough to (perhaps) reach the national level.

You will get to know about the Karni Singh shooting range or the bigger shooting ranges or about the NRAI. You will get to know about these organisations at a much later stage after the initial two years. But those two years are very important. If a shooter develops any bad technique in their initial years, it can really have a bad impact on their shooting. So, once the coaches are of sound quality in providing good, technical coaching and they have the awareness of all the WADA rules and they are professional enough to handle their students in a systematic way, it will be a much stronger pool (of shooters). Long term this will convert into medals for the country and improve the overall medal standings (of India) at the Olympics.

FP: One of the key areas that this partnership with the ISSF Academy will focus on is to help Indian coaches receive ISSF coaching licenses. I read that about 40 per cent of coaches who have enrolled in the latest ISSF global course are from India. That is a very large number and of course shows the interest amongst Indians to become licensed shooting coaches….

SS: The ISSF Academy emailed me and confirmed that this time, among all the participants, 40 per cent are from India and they also thanked me for that, for motivating the coaches enough to do this. There are so many coaches in the country. There are so many national level shooters who want to become coaches, once they are through with their shooting careers. Some of them do it to give back to the sport, most of them do it as a fall-back career. But, yes, 40 per cent is the lion’s share I would say of the total participants from all over the world.

One very interesting thing - shooting is not restricted only to the metros. These private ranges are all over the country, including some very small towns and rural areas. So, a lot of coaches who have registered this time are from very small towns and rural areas who don’t understand or speak English. Now, all these (ISSF Academy) lectures are basically in English. The training team of the ISSF Academy are some very renowned people who have won multiple Olympic gold medals (amongst them) and the official language is English.

But what the ISSF Academy has done is that they are transcribing all the lectures and their platform is translating it to 40 different languages, including Hindi. So, all these coaches who come from small towns and rural backgrounds (in India) have that flexibility of translating the transcripts in Hindi and understanding the course.

FP: One significant detail of this partnership with the ISSF Academy also is that there is not going to be any money that will be changing hands. So, how do the logistics work? Is there a fee involved?

SS: What this means is that there is no monetary exchange between us and the ISSF Academy. But yes, there is a fee to attend this training course and the coaches pay that fee directly to the ISSF Academy. The fee is 490 euros for the course, which will be directly paid by the coaches who are taking the course to the academy.

FP: You have been running the Topgun Shooting Academy, which you launched in 2006. You have since then gone on to expand in terms of the number of centres, including one that came up in Gurugram last year. Tell us a little more about the work you have been doing and also what in your opinion was the reason the ISSF Academy wanted to partner with you specifically…

SS: So, apart from the Academy, as you know, we also run a dedicated shooting sport website called Indianshooting.com. We will complete 20 years next month, on April 5, so it’s been a long journey for the site. This was the first website for shooting sport in India. In fact, we started this at a time the shooting federation also didn’t have a website of their own. Indianshooting.com was launched in 2005.

In 2004, Rajyavardhan Rathore had won Olympic silver – the first medal in shooting for India at the Olympics and there were a lot of questions and queries – how does one start shooting? What is shooting? A lot of journalists didn’t know a lot about shooting back then and there was hardly any coverage for shooters. I remember shooters finishing in the top three at World Cups, but there would be no news of that.

That was when Indianshooting.com came up and we started writing about shooters’ achievements back then and we would even send press notes to other publications and they would pick it up and that’s how we started spreading news of the sport and putting the spotlight on the shooters. So, this partnership (with the ISSF Academy) is more about Indianshooting.com and its reach. The connectivity it has with coaches all over the country and its social media presence. So, it’s not as much to do with the academy. We have five academies (branches) now spread across the NCR and one in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. But the partnership was more because of the website.

FP: Let’s talk a little bit now about the overall health of Indian sport shooting. From the time you first began shooting till now, the Indian shooting landscape has changed completely. Rajyavardhan Rathore’s silver at the Athens Olympics put Indian shooting on the global map and then Abhinav Bindra’s gold took Indian shooting to the next level – both as a global shooting force to be reckoned with and mushrooming interest in shooting sport in the country. What other big changes have contributed in the overall growth of Indian shooting?

SS: Obviously, the sport has been on the rise (in India), ever since Rathore won the silver (in 2004). That was followed by Abhinav’s gold in 2008 and Gagan and Vijay in 2012. Then there were two Olympic games where we did not win any medals (2016 & 2021). But from 2012 till Paris (2024 Games) we did perform very well in World Cups, dominating them in fact. We also did very well in the World Championships, where the competition is also very high. One good thing that has happened is the cropping up of small, private shooting ranges, all over the country. This happened not when Rathore won the silver, but when Abhinav Bindra won the gold, because that medal was won in a 10m event. Now, all these private ranges are basically 10m ranges.

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When Abhinav Bindra won the Olympic gold , it put a lot of focus on the 10m (rifle) event. People wanted to know what is this 10m Rifle shooting about, how much space it requires. That is when a lot of schools, all over the country, opened ranges. Now, many schools in the country have a small 10m shooting club or range. It occupies much lesser space than say a basketball court. There are no licensing requirements to play 10m events. Manu Bhaker first started shooting in her school in Jhajjar. That is where she was introduced to the sport. It was a very basic range in her school.

So, there are ranges across the country in schools. So, this is one thing that I have seen change in the sport – ranges in schools and also private standalone ranges established by former national level shooters and there are about one thousand such private shooting ranges across India. And that is why we have huge participation of about 13,000 to 15,000 people shooting in the nationals. Just imagine – if there were thirteen-and-a-half thousand people who shot at the last nationals, so you can also calculate the number of shooters who are currently training at this ranges.

First you have the pre-state championships, where a lot of the shooters are screened. Then you have the state championships. Then there are the zonals and then very few of them make it to the nationals. The private shooting ranges have really chipped in and helped create a large pool of shooters, out of which many make it to the nationals and out of that you get a good squad of shooters who make it to the Indian team and that’s where they are groomed and mentored by top coaches. That’s where the national federation also comes into the picture and converts them into Olympians.

Another good thing that happened to the sport is that when our Indian shooters began winning medals at the Olympics, it became a priority sport for the country and the government and there were a lot of relaxations that came about in terms of policies. Earlier, when I played my first few nationals, the rules for importing air rifles were very strict. There was a rule that you had to finish in the top 8 in order to be eligible to import a simple air rifle and it was a catch-22 situation because if you didn’t have your own rifle, how would you finish in the top 8?

When I played my first nationals, I played with a borrowed air rifle. Everybody would start their career like that in those days – shoot with borrowed guns in the first nationals and then if you finished in the top 8, which is something that I fortunately managed to do and then I was eligible to import my own air rifle. This rule then became a bit more flexible, it was made for the top-25, which made it easier for people to import (air rifles). Then from top-25 there was a major change in the rule. The new rule was that you just had to be a registered shooter with a rifle academy or a rifle club to be eligible to import an air rifle. That change in policy really helped at least the rifle and pistol group in a big way. And that is what the current rule is, where GST is also exempted for the national shooters.

FP: As far as gun import is concerned for shooters, would you like to see any other changes in the system going forward?

SS: It would be great move in the future if registered shooters of a rifle club could also get the GST exemption, because they are just using these for sporting purposes. GST on guns is a huge amount. These guns cost about Rs 2 lakh and if you add 18 per cent GST to that, that’s about Rs 36,000. Shooting is already an expensive sport. The other changes are – strengthening the coaches, which we are working on also. Also, if the shooter at the grassroot levels could also get access to corporate support and sponsorship support.

Recently Pullela Gopichand also made a comment that only children from rich backgrounds should get into sports, which I disagree with personally and I think a lot of other athletes also disagree with that, because sport is not just about winning medals and making careers, it is also about overall development. You imbibe a lot of qualities. It’s an education. You don’t play a sport just to try and win a medal in the Olympics, you play sport to learn a lot of things, including, very importantly – how to take a loss in the right spirit. You don’t just learn how to win in a sport, but it also teaches you how to lose.

So basically – rebate on equipment, sponsorship support at the grassroot level, local area-wise sponsorship for domestic-level athletes who are performing well in the zonals, state or the nationals, at least. Right now, the support is coming through for just the elite shooters. Even the sport NGOs, who are doing a fantastic job, but they are only signing up athletes who are already in the Indian team or those who are capable of performing well in the Olympics. So, they are only identifying those athletes and investing in them.

But everyone has to understand that these athletes were also struggling somewhere in a small town in a private shooting range, with limited resources. And those private range operatives were also struggling to keep the facility running, paying heavy rents, investing a lot from their personal savings. Most private shooting ranges also are not basic. Most of them have also set up electronic targets, which are very expensive. One electronic target costs about Rs 3,65,000. They need to install these targets, because their shooters will be shooting at electronic targets when they go for the nationals at a range like Karni Singh or the MP Shooting Academy in Bhopal. So, the private ranges need support, the shooters at the grassroot levels need support.

FP: Your take on Manu Bhaker - first Indian athlete, from independent India, to win two medals in a single edition of the Olympic Games. I know you have tracked Manu’s career very closely. What is your take on Manu the athlete and how capable she is of overcoming failures and setbacks - like the one we saw at the Tokyo Games, with her gun malfunctioning etc…

SS: Manu Bhaker is an extraordinary athlete. We have all seen her through her career and most of the time she is either on the podium or comes very close to being on the podium. Now, immediately after the Paris Olympics she went for a break and there was a lot of criticism because Manu is also very social media savvy, which I feel nowadays is a requirement for an athlete to attract sponsorships and to be in the public eye. So, a lot of critics started saying that she will not be able to make a comeback.

In the meanwhile, we saw new names come up in the domestic competitions and shoot even better scores, but as soon as Manu Bhaker came back for the trials which recently concluded and she shot very well. In most of them she finished in the top 3 and she is back in the Indian team for the World Cups in April (in Argentina and Peru). She is a very strong shooter. She knows when to take those breaks. She knows how to come back and make a strong statement. I have no doubt that Manu will win big international medals in this Olympic cycle.

FP: Going back in time - India had a couple of Olympic outings – in Rio and Tokyo - where the shooting contingent didn’t win a single medal. Many experts have weighed in on what went wrong. I am curious to know your take…

SS: So, the shooters did perform well in these editions also. If you see, one or two of them made it to the finals. Jeetu Rai was in the final (2016), Saurabh Chaudhary also made it to the finals (2021). Manu Bhaker of course experienced gun malfunction (in 2021), otherwise she would have made a mark in those Olympics itself. But I would say that the Indian shooters were a bit unlucky. Overall, their performance wasn’t that bad, but they were not lucky enough to be on the podium. When shooters go to the Olympics, the coaches and support staff around them also play a significant role.

The Indian shooting squad is usually a large squad, so there are multiple coached attached with the squad. Like they say – too many cooks spoil the broth. There is (often) a fight for credit between the coaches. This is a big problem that the shooters in India are facing, because there are three-four different coaches. One is the coach who initiated your journey and helped you reach the national squad (childhood coach), then there is another coach who helped you reach the Olympic level, then there is your national coach.

So, everybody wants to take the credit say when a shooter is going for the Olympics, which sometimes creates confusion in the mind of a shooter. This is a big problem that Indian shooters at the elite level are facing and shooting being a mental sport, it can really distract a shooter. So, even though I said that the shooters were a bit unlucky in those two editions of the Olympics (2016 and 2021), but there was also a certain amount of mental distraction and other factors which were instrumental in there being no podium finishes.