Skeet shooting is a recreational and competitive activity whose participants use shotguns to attempt to break clay targets which two fixed stations mechanically fling into the air at high speed and at a variety of angles.
Trap shooting is one of the three major disciplines of competitive clay pigeon shooting. The other disciplines are skeet shooting and sporting clays.
The ISSF World Shooting Championships are governed by the International Shooting Sport Federation. World Shooting Championships began in 1897, after the successful 1896 Summer Olympics, and although the ISSF was not founded until 1907, these early competitions are still seen by the organization as the beginning of a continuous row of championships. By this logic, the 2006 competition in Zagreb was called the 49th ISSF World Shooting Championships. These championships, including all ISSF shooting events, are held every four years since 1954. For the shotgun events only, there is an additional World Championship competition in odd-numbered years. These extra competitions are not numbered. In running target, there will be World Championships in Olympic years.
The women's double trap competition at the 2004 Summer Olympics was held on August 18 at the Markópoulo Olympic Shooting Centre near Athens, Greece. This was the last Olympic competition in the event, before being removed from the program shortly after the Games.
Olympic skeet is a variant of skeet shooting, and the specific variant used in the Olympic Games. The discipline is sanctioned by the International Shooting Sport Federation. Two throwing machines at different heights launch a series of 25 targets in a specific order, some as singles and some as doubles, with the shooter having a fixed position between them. Both men's and women's competitions consist of five such series. The top six competitors shoot an additional series as a final round, on targets filled with special powder to show hits more clearly to the audience. The competitors use shotguns of 12 bore or smaller. All actions are allowed, including double barrel breech loaders, semi-automatic or others, but not pump action guns.
Lauryn Annyn Mark is an American Australian Olympic Women's Skeet shooter. She finished fourth in Women's Skeet in the 2004 Summer Olympics and won three gold medals at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Zhang Shan is a Chinese sports shooter and Olympic champion.
Russell Andrew Mark, is an Australian Olympic Champion marksman and world-renowned clay target shooting coach specialising in the disciplines of Olympic Trap and American Trap. Mark is a former World and Olympic Record holder and held the world number one ranking on multiple occasions. He won the gold medal in the Double Trap event at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He also won a silver medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Mark competed at six Olympic Games: 1988 (Trap), 1992 (Trap), 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012. The only Australian Summer Olympian to compete in more Olympiads is Andrew Hoy (seven).
Peter Robert Russell Wilson MBE, is a retired English sport shooter who specialises in the double trap. He is the current world record holder for the event, having scored 198 out of 200 at a World Cup event in Arizona during 2012. A member of the British team for the 2012 Summer Olympics, he was the youngest competitor in the men's double trap event, where he won the gold medal.
Çiğdem Özyaman, also known as Çiğdem Özyaman Özenir after her marriage, is a Turkish sport shooter competing in the skeet event. The 170 cm tall athlete at 62 kg (137 lb) is right-handed.
Elena Allen is a British sport shooter. She represented Wales in the Commonwealth Games in 2014, winning the silver medal, having previously won bronze for England at the 2006 Games. She competed for Team GB at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and has been chosen once more to compete at the 2016 Games.
Charlotte Hollands is a British sports shooter. She won her first Commonwealth Gold medal at the age of 15 at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. In 2015 World Championship, she was part of the British team that won gold in the team trap event.
Susanne Kiermayer is a retired German sport shooter. Kiermayer had won a total of nine medals for both trap and double trap shooting at the ISSF World Cup series. She also captured a silver medal in the same discipline at the 1998 ISSF World Shooting Championships in Barcelona, Spain, striking a total of 91 clay pigeons. Kiermayer is currently a vice-president of the German Shooting Federation.
Natalia Rahman is an Australian sport shooter. She won a gold and silver medal in the women's skeet shooting, at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, a gold medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, coincidentally in her home city, accumulating a score of 90 targets. She has also won a bronze medal for Australia at the world cup in Shanghai, and bronze medal at the World Championships in Cairo, and silver medal at the World Championships in Finland. Rahman is also the sister of two-time Olympian Paul Rahman, and the daughter of her personal coach Goran Rahman.
Lin Yi-chun is a Taiwanese sport shooter. She won two medals, gold and silver, in the women's double trap, at the 2001 and 2002 ISSF World Shooting Championships in Cairo, Egypt and Lahti, Finland, respectively. She also captured a bronze medal in the women's trap at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, accumulating a score of 80 clay pigeons and a bonus of 1 target from a shoot-off. She won gold at the 2023 ISSF World Shooting Championships in trap.
Amber Jo Rutter OLY is an English sport shooter who specialises in skeet. She has won a total of three gold medals in a major international competition, spanning the ISSF World Cup series, and the inaugural European Games held in Baku, Azerbaijan. She also finished with a silver medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in the women's skeet event. A member of the GB team, Hill trains with her personal coach Joe Neville at E.J. Churchill Shooting Ground in Wycombe. Since her withdrawal from the 2020 Olympics, she has been active in promoting mental health in sport.
Mairaj Ahmed Khan is an Indian skeet shooter and two-time Olympian. Khan was the first Indian skeet shooter to qualify for the Olympics when he qualified for the Rio Olympics in 2015; he also competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He has won gold at the ISSF World Shooting Championships, the Commonwealth Shooting Championships, and the Asian Shooting Championships. In 2021, Sportstar reported that Khan was ranked #24 in the world in skeet.
Seema Tomar is an Indian trap shooter. She is the only Indian woman to win shotgun Silver Medal at the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Cup. She was born in Johri village of Uttar Pradesh.
Austen Jewell Smith is an American sports shooter and Olympian. She holds a silver and bronze medal in skeet from the 2024 Paris Olympics, alongside a gold medal from the 2021 ISSF World Cup Shotgun held in Lonato, Italy.
British Shooting is the national governing body for ISSF shooting sport disciplines in the United Kingdom. The organisation serves as a single shooting body to receive public funding from UK Sport and Sport England, administer high performance squads and talent pathways as well as serve as the member body for shooting sports with organisations such as the British Olympic Association and ISSF.
