The Brazilians took over as Chairman of the Athletes' Committee in 2022 when previous incumbent Kimberly Rhode was elected ISSF Vice President. This meant that he had a place on the world governing body's Executive Committee

"We don't have the power only with my vote to enforce anything, in the end if we go to a vote inside the Exco, we can be passed by, unless we can convince the members with good reasons," Rippel told insidethegames here during the ISSF World Championships.

The Pan American Games gold medallist, standing for re-election to the ISSF Athletes' Committee for another four-year term, revealed that the ISSF athletes' group had received guidance from International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and IOC Athletes' Commission chair Emma Terho.

It was suggested that they followed the example of the IOC where the Athletes' Commission do have a vote on the leadership of the organisation.

"At least one vote at the General Assembly would be good," Rippel said.

"It is one of our desires, we requested to have one seat in the Exco and three seats in the Council, one for rifle, one for pistol and one for shotgun, so we would be represented inside the Council.

Rippel claimed that previous ISSF President Vladimir Lisin and secretary general Alexander Ratner had turned down requests for more representation.

"When we changed the constitution of the ISSF we tried to convince Mr Ratner and Mr Lisin to recruit our Athletes Committee to be able to vote and have a vote in the election of the General Assembly, but they didn't allow it so in that moment it was not possible," the 45-year-old Brazilian army officer told insidethegames.

The Italian Luciano Rossi was elected as ISSF President last November in succession to Lisin.

"He is really receptive, he really listened to us a lot, he is always willing to cooperate," Rippel said.

"it is a relationship of cooperation where we are part of the decision making process,

"We are helping and developing something together, so the athletes will not consider themselves excluded.

"Based on this few months the relationship is really good."

Rippel remains part of an ISSF AdHoc committee which is considering the possibility of Russia and Belarus returning to competition as neutral athletes.

"We don't have a timeline, we are being careful to have a really correct criteria to allow them to not miss any part good or bad," Rippel said.

"We represent athletes from Russia and Belarus and want to compete as neutral athletes but we are also representing the Ukrainian athletes and all the other athletes of the world we need to find middle ground.

"I believe this is why the AdHoc Committee is doing really careful and methodic work to have all the dots.

"It must be really a good job,"