Olympic shooting is a sport of stillness. Athletes stand motionless, slow their heart rate, and squeeze a trigger in the short window between heartbeats. The margins are absurd: on the 10-metre air rifle target, the 10-ring is a dot just half a millimetre wide, and finals are regularly decided by a tenth of a point. It is one of the quietest sports at the Games, and one of the tensest.

How Shooting Works

Olympic shooting is divided into three disciplines: rifle, pistol and shotgun. Rifle and pistol events are held indoors on shooting ranges, where athletes aim at stationary targets at distances of 10, 25 and 50 metres. Shotgun events are held outdoors, where athletes shoot at moving clay targets launched into the air.

The sport is governed by the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF), founded in 1907 and based in Munich, Germany. At Paris 2024 there were 15 shooting events — six for men, six for women and three mixed team events — with around 340 athletes taking part. The competition was held at the National Shooting Centre in Châteauroux, about 260 kilometres south of Paris.

Rifle

There are two rifle events. In the 10-metre air rifle, athletes shoot 60 shots from a standing position at a target 10 metres away, using a rifle powered by compressed air. In the 50-metre rifle three positions, athletes shoot from three positions — kneeling, prone and standing — with the shots divided evenly between them, at a target 50 metres away.

Rifle shooting is scored in decimals in the finals: a perfect centre shot is worth 10.9, not 10. Every shot is scored automatically by electronic targets, which use acoustic or optical sensors to find exactly where the pellet or bullet passed through. The score appears on the athlete's monitor and on the arena screens in a fraction of a second.

Pistol

Pistol events are shot one-handed, from a standing position. In the 10-metre air pistol, athletes fire 60 shots within 75 minutes at a 10-ring just 11.5 millimetres wide. The men's programme also includes the 25-metre rapid fire pistol, where five shots are fired in quick succession at a series of targets. The women's programme includes the 25-metre pistol, a precision event shot in two stages.

In pistol finals, the scoring works on a hit-or-miss basis in the 25-metre events: a shot only counts as a hit if it scores above a set value. In the 10-metre events, finals use the same decimal scoring as rifle, up to 10.9 per shot.

Shotgun

Shotgun is the loud, fast-moving half of the sport. Athletes shoot at clay targets — small orange discs — launched from machines, and the scoring is simple: hit or miss. There are two disciplines.

In trap, the shooter stands at one of five stations, and targets are launched moving away from them, in a random order, from a machine at ground level. Up to two shots may be fired at each target. In qualification, athletes shoot 125 targets across five series of 25.

In skeet, athletes move between eight stations arranged in a semicircle, and targets are thrown from two machines — one high, one low — at different heights and angles, sometimes two at once. Both events demand fast reactions and precise timing, and ties are broken with shoot-offs, where athletes take turns until one misses.

Shotgun cartridges in Olympic competition are limited to lead pellet loads of 24.5 grams.

Scoring and Finals

Qualification rounds decide who reaches the final, and in rifle and pistol the qualification scores do not carry forward — the final starts from zero. Finals are elimination contests: after an opening series of shots, the lowest-ranked athlete is eliminated, then another after every couple of shots, until only two remain for the last shots. It is a format designed for drama, and it means the leader after qualification can lose everything in the final.

Formats and Major Competitions

Beyond the Olympics, the sport's biggest stages are the ISSF World Championships and the ISSF World Cup series, which run through the season and decide world rankings and Olympic quotas. Quota places for the Olympics belong to the athlete's National Olympic Committee, which then selects its team.

A Brief History

Target shooting has been part of the modern Olympic Games since the early editions, and the sport's international federation, the ISSF, has standardised the rules since 1907. The modern sport has moved steadily towards equality: the Paris 2024 programme was split evenly between men and women, with three mixed team events — mixed 10-metre air rifle, mixed 10-metre air pistol and mixed skeet — added to the schedule.

How to Follow Shooting

Start with the 10-metre air rifle and air pistol finals. They are short, the elimination format makes them easy to follow, and the decimal scoring means the lead can change on every shot. Then watch trap or skeet, where the clay targets explode in the air and the whole event feels completely different — fast, loud and decided by reflexes rather than stillness.