You signed up, you trained, you packed your gear. Then you arrive at the range and someone hands you a schedule full of relays, bib numbers and firing points, or points you at a noticeboard of PDFs. Reading an ISSF start list and a results list is a small skill, but nobody teaches it, and being confused by it on match morning is a rotten way to start a competition.

This guide walks through both documents column by column: what a start list tells you before you shoot, what a results list tells you afterwards, and the handful of codes and symbols that confuse newcomers. Once you have read one properly, every subsequent list takes thirty seconds.

What is an ISSF start list?

A start list is the official document listing every athlete entered in an event, organised by relay and firing point. It comes out of a process the ISSF calls squadding: the assignment of entered athletes to relays and firing points in rifle and pistol events (or to squads in shotgun). If you want the deeper picture of how entries work in the first place, see how to enter your first sanctioned shooting competition.

At a championship you will typically see a stack of start lists pinned near the range office or published on the event website: one for each stage of each event. An elimination relay shoots first when entries exceed range capacity, qualification follows, and the final gets its own list once qualification results are in. Each list carries the event name, the stage, the date and a start time, so check the header before assuming anything.

The Munich World Cup start lists are a good mental model. A real one from the 10m air rifle mixed team qualification reads: event, stage, date, start time 09:15, then the athlete rows. Small detail worth noticing: the same start list gets reused for pre-event training. If your championship publishes a training schedule, it usually mirrors your relay and firing point from the official list, which makes the start list your first planning document of the week, not just a footnote.

How do you find your relay and firing point?

Find your own name first. Easiest route: search the PDF or webpage for your surname or your bib number. The bib number is the athlete number assigned for the competition, and it appears on both start lists and results lists, so it is the one identifier that follows you through the whole event.

Read across your row. You will see, in some order:

  • Your bib number and name, with your nation or club code beside them
  • The relay number, telling you which session you shoot in
  • The firing point or target number, telling you where on the line you set up

The relay matters for your whole day. Relay 2 of a 10m air rifle qualification might start at 11:30 while relay 1 started at 09:00, so doubling the wrong relay means arriving two and a half hours early or, far worse, after your relay has begun. Photograph your row when you find it. Start lists also get reissued when athletes withdraw, so glance at the version date on the document before trusting a photo from three days ago.

Firing point allocation is not a ranking. In qualification, athletes are distributed across relays and points so the field spreads evenly along the line; a Championship will even seed top-ranked athletes across different relays on purpose. Shooting point 4 means nothing except that it is yours. What you do with your preparation time in that lane is covered in the hour before your relay.

What is an ISSF results list?

A results list is the ranked record of a completed stage. Where the start list answers "where and when do I shoot", the results list answers "how did everyone do". Same family of PDF, entirely different columns.

A typical qualification results list for a 60-shot event shows, per athlete: rank, bib number, name, nation, the score broken down by series or stage, a total, and the tie-break data. In the men's 10m air pistol qualification at Paris 2024, the series columns read 99-97-96-98-97-97 for the leader, totalling 584, with an inner tens column beside it. Final stage lists look different: decimal scoring, running totals after every shot, and blanks where eliminated athletes stop.

Two habits make results lists genuinely useful rather than just a scoreboard. First, read the series columns, not only the total. A 584 built as 99-97-96-98-97-97 is steady; a 584 built as 100-100-93-97-97-97 tells you the shooter had one bad series in the middle, which is a different story and often a different fix. Second, compare against your own card honestly, because a results list is free competition analysis. Pair it with how to use a shooting diary to analyze your ISSF scores and each match compounds into the next training block instead of vanishing.

How are ties shown on a results list?

Ties appear constantly on results lists, and each sport handles them slightly differently. In ISSF qualification, tied totals are separated by countback and by the number of inner tens. Inner tens are shots that land inside the inner ring of the ten, scored as tens but tracked separately for exactly this purpose.

Paris 2024 gave the cleanest possible example: three men tied at 577 in 10m air pistol qualification for the last qualifying places. The countback and inner-tens comparison separated them, and Sarabjot Singh missed the final eight on 16 inner tens against Robin Walter's 17. Same total, same day, one decimal of a millimetre in aggregate. If the tie survives every countback, a shoot-off at the line decides it; the procedure for that is its own story in how ISSF shoot-offs and countback work.

So when you see two identical totals with different ranks, look at the inner tens column before assuming a mistake. It is the most common "the list is wrong" moment at the results board, and it is almost never actually wrong. How those inner tens and tie-breaks interact with the ranking system over a season is covered in how the ISSF world ranking points system works.

What do the Q, DQ and DNS codes mean?

The notes or remarks column carries short codes that carry real consequences:

  • Q means qualified for the next stage. In most Olympic individual events, the top eight after qualification advance to the final, so eight Qs appear down the list. Team events and championships with extra stages use the same letter for their own cut lines.
  • DNS means did not start. The athlete was on the start list but never fired, through illness, equipment failure or withdrawal.
  • DQ means disqualified, which is rare and always comes with a reason, typically a rules violation rather than a scoring matter. If a score is voided for a specific shot or a crossfire onto the wrong target, that shows up differently again; see ISSF crossfire rules for that case.
  • OR, WR, CR beside a total mean Olympic Record, World Record or Championship Record, which is how record-breaking totals get flagged on the PDF.

One more code worth knowing: provisional results are marked as such until the protest window closes. ISSF results carry a release history line at the bottom of the PDF, and the ranking only becomes official once protests are resolved. If your score looks wrong, that window is your deadline, and the procedure is in how to file a protest at an ISSF competition.

Reading start lists and results like a routine

Turn the paperwork into a fixed routine and it stops costing attention on match day:

  1. The evening before each stage, open the latest start list, confirm your relay, start time and firing point, and screenshot your row.
  2. Arrive in time for your relay's preparation and sighting period, and set up on the firing point from the list, not on where a clubmate waved you.
  3. After the stage, find the provisional results list, check your series columns and total, and note your inner tens.
  4. Before leaving the results board, check whether a protest window is still open and whether any code beside your name needs explaining.

shot-group analysis works the same way: shooters who track series-by-series data on paper get more from every results list too. Scoring your practice cards the same way trains the habit in the off weeks; scoring ISSF targets with your phone makes that quick enough to keep up, and the shot group analyzer turns those scored cards into the same series-by-series picture you just learned to read on a results list.

FAQ

Do start lists change during a competition?

They can. Withdrawals and reshuffles produce new versions, and finals get fresh start lists built from qualification results, with firing points assigned by a new random draw. Always check the release date on the document.

Why do finals start from zero?

Finals in most ISSF events begin with everyone at zero and use decimal scoring, so qualification totals only decide who reaches the final, not who wins it. How that unfolds shot by shot is covered in ISSF finals scoring.

Can I see start lists and results before the event?

Usually yes. ISSF championships publish start lists for elimination and qualification relays a day or more ahead on the event portal, and results go up as provisional PDFs within minutes of a stage ending. Your national federation site does the same for domestic matches.