Australian Olympic Champion Russell Mark to be new Indian shotgun coach?

Australian Olympic Champion Russell Mark to be new Indian shotgun coach?

Russell Mark

In December 2021, The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) had decided to terminate the contracts of all 24 national coaches in light of the Indian shooting team’s disastrous performance at the Tokyo Olympics.

Accordingly a circular inviting applications for Indian and foreign coaches and High Performance experts was issued by the federation on January 11th 2022 with the deadline being 30th January.

FirstSportz has learnt that former Olympic Champion Russell Mark of Australia is the front-runner for the post of the National Trap coach while his wife Lauryn Mark is likely to be the Skeet coach. Russell won the Double Trap gold at the 1996 Olympics and followed it up with a silver at the 2000 edition. Lauryn finished fourth in Women’s Skeet at the 2004 Olympics and has won three golds and a silver at the Commonwealth Games.

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A source told FirstSportz on condition of anonymity: “The rumour in the shooting world here is that they have been offered an enormous amount of money to stay with the team until the Paris Olympics.”

Russell has previously coached Indians Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore to the 2004 Olympic silver and Ronjon Sodhi to two ISSF World Cup golds.