SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Five-time Olympian John McNally isn’t quite sure what the problem was these last couple of days. The long-time veteran shooter that most had banked on winning the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event Thursday, had a couple of disappointing competition days and just couldn’t pull ahead of his Cuban opponents to capture the extremely coveted Olympic Quota spot for the U.S. team.
“I honestly don’t know what I did wrong. I just couldn’t keep the gun still,” 47-year-old McNally said. “After all these years of competing, maybe I’m just getting too old for this. I usually have an extremely steady hand, but today my sights were moving more than ever before.”
McNally finished third, shooting a 671.2 total score. The quota positions are offered to the silver and gold medalists. McNally did finish higher than his U.S. teammate, John Bickar, who was actually doing quite well during the first day of the qualifying rounds. Bickar was in second place going into today with a 290, five points higher than McNally. But by the end of the qualifying shoot, the U.S men were tied and battling just to get a medal.
Bickar didn’t. He finished fifth with a disappointing 669, taking a big step back after being tied with his counterpart for third. He is one of the few pistol athletes that compete in both Air Pistol and Rapid Fire, taking third in the 10m Air Rifle event a few days ago. But it was this Rapid Fire competition he had his heart on winning.
“The rapid fire discipline is actually my favorite. It is harder, and requires more focus.” Bickar had said a couple days ago.
Up next for the U.S. Pistol team is Women’s 25m starting at 9 a.m. on Friday with finals and awards to follow. For more information, please contact Sara Greenlee at sara.greenlee@usoc.org, or call 809-374-9169.
Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol
FINAL RESULTS
Qualif. Final
Name Round Round Total
1 Leuris Pupo (CUB) 590 99.8 689.8
2 Juan Francisco (CUB) 577 101.1 678.1
3 John McNally (USA) 574 97.2 671.2
4 Metodi Igorov (CAN) 569 100.5 669.5
5 John Bickar (USA) 574 95.0 669.0
6 Daniel Felizia (ARG) 569 97.3 666.3
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