D-day for the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF). The body is holding its annual congress this Wednesday, November 30 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. It is elective. In other times, the meeting would have been closely followed by the Olympic movement. But the conflict in Ukraine gives it a very political dimension this year. After the withdrawal last March of Alisher Usmanov from the International Fencing Federation (FIE), the ISSF remains the only body of an Olympic sport, with the IBA, still chaired by a Russian leader. Not just any one. Vladimir Lissine (photo above), 66 years old, the richest man in Russia (67th in the world), is a candidate for re-election. Elected for the first time in 2018, he puts his mandate back on the line against another European leader, the former Italian senator Luciano Rossi. The two men had already been opposed four years earlier for the presidential post. The Russian won with a margin of only 4 votes (148/144). At the time, Luciano Rossi accused his winner of having indirectly threatened him with death and kidnapping. In his campaign for this Wednesday’s election, the Italian denounced “ top-down autocratic management » imposed by Vladimir Lissine on the ISSF. He also criticizes the moving of the shooting events for the Paris 2024 Games to Châteauroux, more than 250 km from the capital. A move accepted by the ISSF. Opposite, the outgoing president is weakened by his nationality. But he can rely on a golden balance sheet. Since 2019, the Russian billionaire has injected ten million dollars of his personal fortune into a shooting development fund. Nearly a hundred national federations would have benefited from it.
