South Korean shooting, which achieved its best-ever performance with three gold and three silver medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, has hit a stumbling block right at the start of its journey toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Delays in administrative procedures related to the selection of national representatives resulted in athletes failing to enter the national training village, causing direct harm to the competitors.

The International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championships, which kick off in Doha, Qatar, on November 1, are a crucial stage offering three quota places per event for the LA Olympics. The main contingent of the South Korean national shooting team departs for the battleground on a flight tonight.

Typically, national athletes enter the Jincheon National Training Center ahead of such high-stakes international competitions to undergo intensive training and meticulously monitor their condition and injury status.

However, athletes heading to the Doha competition had to gather individually at Incheon International Airport because their approval to enter the training center was not granted. Consequently, one athlete joined the squad with a knee injury, casting uncertainty on their participation in the event.

Behind the athletes' inability to enter the training village lies a delay in administrative procedures surrounding the national team selection.

The Korea Shooting Federation dismissed the existing Performance Enhancement Committee members immediately after the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, formed a new committee, and selected the national team for the 2027 season.

However, the dismissed committee members filed an objection through the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC), the upper governing body. In response, the KSOC temporarily withheld approval of national athlete status for the athletes selected by the new committee, stating that it needed to review procedural legitimacy.

With national team approval delayed, the requirements for entering the training village were not met either.

The Shooting Federation argued that even athletes who unquestionably earned their qualifications, independent of the controversy over the committee's composition, were denied entry to the training center.

A federation official vented, "The athletes who requested entry into the training village are top performers in their respective events who automatically board the national team regardless of the committee. Legal issues are matters for the federation to resolve, and athletes should not suffer. It is regrettable that even undisputed athletes are being blocked."

On the other hand, the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee stated, "As fairness in recruitment is a major social issue, we could not ignore the legitimacy of national team selection and thus complied with the regulations. Although entry into the training village was restricted by regulations, we took measures to ensure that participation in the competition itself, where Olympic quotas are at stake, was not blocked."