Shooting elections – Newspaper Kommersant No. 138 (7339) of 08/02/2022

To keep the presidency of the International Sports Shooting Federation (ISSF), Russian entrepreneur Vladimir Lisin will have to compete with Italian Luciano Rossi for the second time in a row. It is Mr. Rossi, who in a stubborn struggle lost to a Russian businessman in the previous ISSF presidential election four years ago, will be his main rival in the upcoming elections: they will be held in November. This time, Luciano Rossi has the support of a number of Western countries, whose representatives in the summer demanded that Mr. Lisin give up his position as head of one of the largest sports structures against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine.

The fact that Luciano Rossi will run for president of the International Shooting Sports Federation was reported by Insidethegames. Elections to the ISSF will be held on November 30 in Sharm el-Sheikh, and the current head of the organization, Vladimir Lisin, the main shareholder of NLMK, has already announced that he will also run for them. The deadline for applications from candidates for the presidency of one of the largest sports federations is August 30, but Insidethegames has no doubt that it will be Mr. Rossi who will become Mr. Lisin’s main opponent.

This is a very curious rivalry with a sharp background. It was Vladimir Lisin and Luciano Rossi who fought for the presidency of the ISSF, which was left by Olejario Vazquez Ranha, who led it for almost four decades, in the previous elections in 2018. And then they turned out to be extremely scandalous. In order to participate in the elections, Mr. Rossi, President of the Italian Shooting Federation, had to apply to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) with a claim for the annulment of a three-year suspension imposed on him by the ISSF Ethics Committee for violations related, inter alia, to “conflict of interest” and undermining the integrity of the organization. CAS then sided with him, saying that the sanctions were imposed “for political and personal reasons” and reducing the suspension to 20 weeks.

At the same time, before the elections held in Munich, Luciano Rossi was provided with police protection. He insisted on it, claiming that he received “threats of death” allegedly in order to force the Italian to withdraw his candidacy.

In the elections themselves, Vladimir Lisin achieved success by a minimal margin – 148 votes to 144. And after them, Luciano Rossi again turned to CAS, stating that the delegates from the two countries were not allowed to vote on them. But this time the arbitration refused to satisfy his claim.

Further, the rivalry continued in absentia – in the election of the President of the European Shooting Confederation (ESC). Luciano Rossi also tried to take this post, but he was beaten by another Russian – Alexander Ratner, appointed at one time by Vladimir Lisin as the Secretary General of the ISSF. Mr. Rossi insisted that in this case there was a classic conflict of interest, but he did not receive support, and Mr. Lisin characterized his words as trying to create an “illusion of violations.”

Meanwhile, Insidethegames believes that it will be more difficult for Vladimir Lisin to succeed in 2022 due to the pressure on many domestic sports functionaries that arose due to Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. In any case, it is obvious that the “specific weight” of the opposition is now large. This is proved, for example, by the appearance in June of an open letter to the ISSF, signed by representatives of a number of Western countries, such as the USA, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden. Its authors called on Vladimir Lisin to resign.

At the same time, Insidethegames suggests that over the past four years, Vladimir Lisin’s position in the “small” countries has seriously strengthened. This happened thanks to the fund he established, in which Mr. Lisin invested $10 million and from which grants were distributed to them.

Vladimir Lisin is not the only Russian president of a large sports federation to face elections this year. Immediately after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the head of the International Fencing Federation (FIE), Alisher Usmanov, announced that he had suspended his activities in this post “until justice is restored”, that is, the removal of sanctions imposed on him on “trumped-up” and “unfounded” charges EU. But the leaders of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and the International Boxing Federation (IBA) Arkady Dvorkovich and Umar Kremlev continued their work. Mr. Dvorkovich will be re-elected to the presidency next Sunday. Mr. Kremlev has actually already been re-elected – in May. But CAS canceled the election results, having considered the claim of the main competitor of Umar Kremlev, Boris van der First. Shortly before the IBA Congress, the Boxing Independent Integrity Unit, the body of the federation responsible for the integrity of the structure and the observance of the rules of fair play, ruled that the Dutchman violated the rules by actually opening the election campaign “outside the electoral period” and banned him from running. CAS canceled the decision after the elections, authorizing new ones. They will probably be organized in the fall.

Alexey Dospekhov