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Soldier takes gold in Beijing, breaks record
By SCOTT PITONIAK Gannett News ServiceBEIJING—As Glenn Eller proved Tuesday afternoon at the Beijing Shooting Range, amnesia can be a powerful weapon when your shots are missing their targets.
Eller, a soldier in the U.S. Army, hit nothing but air the first two times he pulled the trigger of his shotgun during the Olympic men's double trap finals. But he quickly forgot the misses and nailed the next 16 clay discs he fired at on his way to the gold medal.
"I just put it out of my mind," said Eller, who held off silver medalist Francesco D'Aniello of Italy, bronze medalist Binyuan Hu of China, and U.S. teammate and fourth-place finisher Jeffrey Holguin.
"That (consecutive misses) happens every now and then. It just so happened on the first pair, so I just put it away and kept focused."
That he did, as made 45 of his next 48 shots to win by 3 points.
Eller entered the finals with a commanding four-shot cushion, thanks to an Olympic record-setting performance in the qualifying round in which he scored 145 points.
"It was a nice lead to begin with until the first pair (of misses in the finals)," he said, smiling. "Then, I was a little nervous."
Eller, who hails from Houston, attributed the misfires to an adrenaline rush.
"The targets came out and I jumped all over them," he said.
After that, he calmed down, and settled into the same zone that enabled him to toy with the field during the qualification round. He eventually built his lead back to four and wound up finishing with a score of 190.
Eller, 26, finished 17th in the same event at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. His dramatic improvement the past four years is no mystery. He's in the Army now. Training and competing daily against the country's top marksmen in Ft. Benning, Ga., has made all the difference.
"When I had him by himself in Colorado Springs, he trained really hard every day, but he had nothing to compare his performance with," said U.S. Olympic shooting coach Lloyd Woodhouse. "Now, he has three others who are very good shooters he can compare his performances with . . . and it's made a vast difference in his attitude."
Being healthy also has helped. Eller suffered food poisoning at the 2000 Games in Sydney and battled a pinch nerve in his neck in 2004.
Holguin, of Fort Benning, also began the day strong and was in third place after the qualifiers. But he shot down only three of six clay pigeons at the beginning of the final round, and never recovered.
"I just had a bad start," he said. "I've come back from starts like that, but, today, I didn't have it, and I couldn't get it back quickly enough."
Scott Pitoniak writes for the Rochester, N.Y. Democrat and Chronicle.