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At<br />
7 1Y American Shooters<br />
LOST the OLYMPICS<br />
U.S. SHOOTERS, <strong>GUNS</strong>, AND AMMUNITION ARE AS GOOD AS ANY.<br />
WHY MUST WE CONTINUE TO BE "ALSO RANS" IN OLYMPIC COMPETITION?<br />
HE SHELLACKING our rifle and pistol teams took in the<br />
T Olympic games at Melbourne came as a stunning shock<br />
to those who have liked to brae that America is a nation<br />
"<br />
of dead-eye marksmen. Against tough, out-to-win inter-<br />
national competition, the United States took just one lowly<br />
third-place medal out of the entire program of rifle,<br />
pistol, and shotgun matches. The real dead-eye dicks at<br />
Melbourne were the Russians, who took three of the seven<br />
first-place medals. The other four firsts went one each<br />
to Romania, Italy, Canada, and Finland. The Long Rifle<br />
boys in buckskin must have spun in their coffins.<br />
By COLONEL CHARLES ASKINS<br />
Yet no one should have been surprised that we lost the<br />
Olympic shooting; We have been losing Olympic shooting<br />
matches in large numbers and with great consistency<br />
throughout the 60 years since the modem revival of<br />
the ancient games. In all those 60 years we have won<br />
the Olympic shooting championship only twice, the last<br />
time in 1924. We have won exactly one golden first in<br />
Olympic pistol competition in the past 32 years. Our<br />
rifle record is not much better, with a total of six firsts<br />
since 1920. The best we have been able to tally in the<br />
past three decades in the overall Olympic shooting aggre-<br />
Ljungman auto rifle shot by Olaf Skoldberg in running<br />
deer duel with Romanenko gained second place for Swede.
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