Emmons loses gold medal after aiming at wrong target
By
Steve Rivera, Gannett News Service (8-22-04,
MARKOPOULO
— With one bullet left to shoot, all Matt Emmons
needed was a score of 7.2 to win his second gold medal of the Olympic Games. On
his first nine shots in the finals, Emmons' lowest score was a 9.3. He took
careful aim, fired ... bull's eye. Only Emmons' shot pierced the wrong target — known as
a crossfire — resulting in a score of 0. Instead of
gold, Emmons, 23, of
"Stuff happens,"
he said. "That's the Games, that's just sports.
In all honesty, I was the best guy on the line. I can go away with that and be
happy. I had a gold-medal performance, and that's all that matters. I don't
know if I can make up for this, but I'm looking forward to Beijing. I'll live
to shoot another day."
China's Jia
Zhanbo won the gold, finishing with 1264.5. USA's
Michael Anti (1263.1) won the silver, and Austria's Christian Planer (1257.4),
whose target Emmons hit, ended up with the bronze. Emmons finished with a score
of 1257.4.
Emmons, who won the prone
rifle gold on Friday, said he felt fine going into his final shot. He said he
was more concerned with calming himself down rather than looking at his target.
"Every great once in a
while, that will happen," Emmons said. "Six or seven years ago was
the last time I crossed-fired." Anti gave Emmons a sympathetic hug.
"It must be devastating
for him," Anti said. "He's the best shooter I've ever seen. It must
have been a mental error. I've seen it happen before, but I can't believe it
happened to Emmons." Emmons fired at the target in lane three while he was
shooting in lane two. When no score appeared on the electronic scoring device
for his lane, he turned to officials and gestured there was some sort of error.
"I shot," he
appeared to say with a quizzical look as three officials in red blazers
approached.
The officials went back and
huddled briefly before announcing that Emmons had cross-fired — an extremely
rare mistake in elite competition — and awarded him a score of zero. Emmons explained he usually looks at the
number of the target through his viewfinder as a reference point and then
lowers his gun to hone in on the target.
"On that shot, I was just worrying about calming myself down and
just breaking a good shot, and so I didn't even look at the number," he
said. "I probably should have. I will from now on." When judges checked the wrong target, they
determined Emmons had scored an all-for-naught 8.1.
"Honestly, when I shot
the shot, everything felt fine," a stunned Emmons told reporters. "I
looked down at the monitor and I didn't see a shot. On those targets, sometimes
every once in a great while, it won't register. The shot just doesn't show up,
so that's what I thought happened."
"For like a half-a-second, I thought, 'Maybe I cross-fired ... no,
no, I didn't do that.'" At the time
it happened, it allowed China to tie the United States for the most overall
gold medals in the Athens Games at 20.