The London Olympics will feature ten thousand five hundred athletes, give or take a few rhythmic gymnasts, but it’s possible that none are more compelling than American air-rifle shooter Matt Emmons. At the 2004 Games, Emmons competed in the three-position event, in which participants shoot from their stomachs, knees, and feet at a target fifty metres away. Going into his final shot, Emmons was in first place and needed only a mediocre score for gold. Instead, he shot at the wrong target, one lane over, and got no score at all. He finished eighth. Four years later, in Beijing, Emmons again had a large lead on the final shot: he needed a score of 6.7 in a sport where anything below 8.0 is amateurish. Each time Emmons shoots, he aims above the target, lets his sight fall into the bull’s-eye, then pulls the trigger. This time, his finger slipped and he fired early, scoring a 4.4. Emmons called the shot a “freak of nature.” He finished fourth.
Running down the list of twenty-six sports in London, none requires less athleticism, as we typically define it, than the shooting events. (Archery demands at least one muscular arm.) Yet there is no sport that requires more mental precision. Rifle shooters are trained to fire between heartbeats. Medals are won by millimetres. It’s a sport whose top competitors are expected to be so accurate that we have a hard time believing that they could actually miss. In the first Olympiad, in 1896, the American Sumner Paine used a Colt revolver to win one gold and one silver in the pistol competition. Five years later, arriving home to find his wife in a state of undress with his daughter’s music teacher, Paine pulled out his gun and fired four shots at the fleeing teacher. None hit their mark. Paine was arrested for assault but quickly released. Had he wanted to, the police figured, Paine could have nicked off the man’s fingernails one by one then put a bullet through his heart. He had shown restraint.
In the intervening century, competitive gun technology has only gotten more sophisticated. (This year’s modern pentathlon, which combines running, horseback riding, swimming, fencing, and shooting, will feature laser guns rather than air guns.) As such, the expectations for an élite athletes’ precision have only increased.
by Reeves Weideman, The New Yorker | Read more:
Photograph by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty.
