India’s first ISSF A Coaches Course began October 10 in Faridabad with 30 participants, according to the federation’s October 11 announcement. The National Rifle Association of India organized the program with the ISSF Academy. Twenty-nine participating coaches were from India and one from the United States.
The announcement describes a program combining classroom work, technical discussion and practical sessions across rifle and pistol. Dr. Vesa Nissinen directs the ISSF Academy; Manoj Kumar leads rifle instruction and Agi Kassoumi pistol instruction, with assistant instructors named in the official account. As of this report, the source documents the opening, not a completed graduating class.
Coaching education is part of sport’s infrastructure, even when it produces no medal table of its own. Our editorial view is that coverage should ask what a program teaches, who provides it and how completion is assessed. A course title alone does not tell a reader how much experience a participant had beforehand, nor does attendance prove a later competitive outcome.
For an athlete evaluating a coach, useful questions concern the person’s experience with the athlete’s event, communication style, safeguarding practices and scope of qualification. Those questions deserve direct answers from the coach or governing body. They cannot be settled by borrowing credibility from a news story about a different program. This account is an institutional update, not a recommendation of a particular instructor or a substitute for supervised instruction. We will describe the course as underway unless a subsequent verified announcement establishes its conclusion. That keeps the timeline clear and respects the distinction between the promise of professional education and evidence of its results.
Explore more shooting sports and read Gunfire’s editorial standards. Source reporting was checked on October 13, 2026; the original announcement date appears in the source box.
Sources & further reading
Original source publication: 2026-10-11.
Sources reviewed 2026-10-13.
Prepared for Gunfire Magazine with AI assistance from the linked source material and the publication’s editorial brief. This piece does not claim original interviews, on-site reporting or hands-on product testing.