Russell Andrew Mark, is an Australian Olympic Champion Shooter. He won the Olympic gold medal in double trap at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. He also won an Olympic silver medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He has competed at six Olympic Games: 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012. The only Australian Summer Olympian to compete in more Olympiads is Andrew Hoy, who competed in seven. His win at the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics gave him the distinction of being the inaugural shotgun shooter of the sport to win all four of the world major individual titles: World Cup, World Cup Final, World Championship and Olympic Games. After the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics, he had a set of silver medals in all four major titles. He shares with the American clay target shooter Kimberley Rhode the honor of a grand slam gold and silver medallist. Mark is also a world-renowned professional clay target shooting coach. Mark is a dual World Individual Champion and dual World Team Champion. He won an individual World Cup gold medal in Los Angeles, USA ; this was the first-ever World Cup individual gold medal by an Australian in any Shooting discipline. He also won gold medals in Lonato, Italy ; Munich, Germany ; Lima, Peru ; Sydney, Australia ; and Perth, Australia. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Mark won a gold medal in men's double trap. In August 2007, in Munich, Germany, the International Shooting Sports Federation inducted him into its Hall of Fame as the greatest double trap shooter of all time. This was an accolade he shared with fellow shotgun shooters Luciano Giovannetti, Kimberly Rhode, and Susan Nattrass. In 1997, Mark was honoured with the Order of Australia Medal for services to sport and the Australian Sports Medal in June 2000. In August 2019, Russell Mark was nominated to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. He is the second shotgun shooter so honoured. He was preceded by Donald Macintosh who titled at the Paris 1900 Summer Olympics.
Personal life
Mark was educated in Ballarat, Victoria, at the Brown Hill Primary School and Ballarat East High School. He completed a Diploma of Business Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and worked in the real estate industry as a real estate valuer from 1985 until 1997. In 1997, Mark started working for Melbourne radio station 3AW as a sports presenter. In 2002 he commenced a role as a sports commentator on ABC radio where he worked for the next 13 years on the breakfast show with iconic media personality Red Symons. Mark retired from radio work in 2016. Russell Mark worked for Australian television Network Channel 7 as a commentator at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Mark owns and is a director of two hotels in his home town of Hoppers Crossing, Victoria and is a director of an entertainment clay target shooting business, Go Shooting Pty Ltd. Mark was an Athlete's Representative on the Australian Olympic Committee's Athletes Commission from 1997 until 2004. He served as an Executive Board Member on the Victorian Olympic Committee from 2005 until 2012. He was also a Board member for Shooting Australia on two occasions from 2007 to 2009 and from 2011 to 2013. He has been an official Ambassador for the Carlton Football Club since 1997. Since 1999 Mark has written a monthly column for the Australian Shooting Magazine the Australian Shooters Journal.
Family
Mark married fellow champion shooter and triple Commonwealth Games gold medallist and dual Olympian Lauryn Mark on March 17, 2004, on a Hamilton Island beach in a surprise wedding ceremony. He has three children.
Competition shooting career
Mark's career includes an individual Olympic Gold and Silver Medal, 2 individual World Championships, 6 World Cup Championships and 2 World Team Championships as well as 39 Australian National Open Championships. His first Open Australian Championship came in 1980 as a sixteen-year-old junior competitor in Perth where he also set a new Australian Open Record. He had a run of twenty consecutive years from 1988 to 2007 where he won at least one Australian Title each year. In September 1992 at a major tournament in Tamworth, NSW, Mark became the first Australian to hit more than one thousand targets in succession. He finished the competition with 1177 hits in a row breaking his own Australian record set in January 1992 in Canberra of 859 consecutive hits. In 1997, he won the men's double trap World Championship in Peru with a new World Record. In 2004, Mark served as part of the administrative support team at the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics working for the Australian Olympic Committee as an Athlete's Liaison Officer. Also during 2004 he controversially took the position as the personal coach to the Indian marksman Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore who went on to become India's first ever individual Olympic medalist at the Athens Olympics by winning a silver medal. In 2006, Mark competed at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games where he won a gold medal. He participated in the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics where he finished 5th in Olympic men's double trap. In 2010, he declared an intention to make the London 2012 Summer Olympics his sixth appearance. On 7 June 2012, Mark was named in the Olympic team. He has competed at six Commonwealth Games. This is a record for any Australian shotgun athlete. Mark retired from international competition after the 2014 ISSF World Championship in Spain. Marks' home shooting range was the Werribee-Victorian Clay Target Club. He was made a life member of the club in 1996. In March 2009, Mark was inducted into the Australian Clay Target Association's Hall of Fame as the youngest member. Mark has been a Global Ambassador for the world's leading firearm manufacturer, Beretta Italy, since 1986. In 2019, Mark was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
