ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607220086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Our Eyes in Atlanta
DATELINE: COLLEGE PARK, GA.
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Olympic dream was nothing new to Ben Amonette. Been there, done that, in Barcelona.
However, when Amonette fired his first two shots in one of the first events on the opening day of competition of the Atlanta Games, there was a problem.
He had Georgia on his mind.
The national 10-meter air pistol champion from Radford was toting more than his Walther .177-caliber pellet gun Saturday at the shiny Wolf Creek Shooting Complex in this Atlanta suburb.
Amonette had been a silver medalist in the last two Pan American Games. He finished 14th in the event in the Barcelona Olympics four years ago. And among 10,788 athletes in Atlanta, the Radford University alumnus and U.S. Army Reserve sergeant is alone with Southwest Virginia roots.
Just minutes after International Olympics Committee leader Juan Antonio Samaranch strode onto the grounds to award the first medal of the games to Poland's Renata Mauer in the women's 10-meter air rifle, Amonette pulled the trigger on his first two shots.
He was pistol-whipped by then. Amonette finished in a three-way tie for 44th place among 50 competitors with 569 points, shooting eight points worse than he did in Barcelona.
"No excuses," Amonette said. "I was nervous. I felt where I was. It was strange. I never felt comfortable. It wasn't me shooting today."
His disappointment wasn't only rooted in another four years of practice to return to the Olympics. His emotions got the best of him.
Here he was, shooting on the world stage, in the Olympics that were veritably in his back yard. The section of seats in the 10-meter range behind Amonette's firing point was filled with family and friends from Virginia Beach, Luray and Radford, among other postmarks.
When Amonette's name was announced bilingually by the public address announcer 15 minutes before the competition, he got the loudest cheer of any competitor.
His wife and son were there, mother and father and sister and brothers, too. There were nephews and in-laws and friends and even a man who didn't know Amonette, but bought a ticket to watch because he was a Radford native transplanted to the Peach State.
"That's what makes it so disappointing," Amonette said. "Because they are here, it makes me want to do better. I'm not the only one who's had to sacrifice to get here. They did, too. I wanted to do well for them."
Amonette said that when he aimed his pistol the first few times in warm-ups, "there was a little wobble there you usually don't see. I already knew I was nervous. It was a downward spiral, and I couldn't stop it."
He was dressed the part, wearing a red cap with "USA" across the front, white U.S. Olympic shooting team shirt and blue shorts.
It was his scores that didn't look right. His first two shots were 8 and 8. Ten is perfect, and because Olympic air pistoling isn't poker, a pair of 8's won't help.
Beginning an Olympic round with two 8's is kind of like starting a round of golf with two triple bogeys. in the qualifying round of 10-meter air pistol, competitors take 60 shots in six rounds of 10.
Amonette had only 90 on his first round, then 93. The top eight in qualifying advance to the medal round, for which the cutoff was 581.
In other words, after Amonette's first two rounds, he would have needed 38 perfect shots out of 40 just to reach that. His stated pre-competition goal of 580 would have put him in the top 10, which he desired, but not the medal chase.
If it sounds like this is splitting hairs, in a way, it is. To score a 10, a shooter must put the pellet into the target's center ring, which is 11.5 millimeters in diameter, or slightly larger around than an aspirin.
With the 8's - Amonette had a third one in the first round - he missed a target area about the circumference of a quarter. He was 14 points from perfect in the final four rounds, but...
"They say there's a fine line between genius and insanity," said the 41-year-old shooter. "Well, there's also a fine line to falling off a fence one side or the other, and I fell off the wrong side."
How stunning were the back-to-back 8's? OK, it pales next to Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic stadium cauldron, but not by much.
"I don't remember the last time I had two 8's like that," Amonette said. "I'd been shooting well in practice until late Thursday, then I felt it coming."
Amonette skipped the opening ceremonies because he knew it would run late and his legs didn't need the waiting and walking produced by the Parade of Nations. He went to bed in the Olympic Village early.
"I woke up about 1:30 this morning, and I just laid there until about 3:30, and all I could think about was the match. I'd been shooting in a higher zone in practice. I was on a different plateau. My skills are so much better now than they were in Barcelona."
When Amonette finished his round, he walked quietly into the stands and sat on a step next to his wife, Peggy, and father, Bill. He got a kiss on the forehead and a pat on the back.
Amonette wasn't expecting a medal, but he wasn't expecting to be talking redemption when he returns - the family is staying, too - to Wolf Creek for the 50-meter free pistol competition Tuesday.
"At times like this, I always remember a saying," Amonette said. "It's `You can achieve all things though God that strengthen you.' Maybe that's what getting shot out today was about."
Maybe. No one who watched Amonette shoot Saturday is any less proud of him. He's a singular Olympian in more territory than his home town.
He also learned that when the Olympics are in your back yard, the butterflies don't have as far to fly.
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: USA Shooting/Moore Ben Amonette, the national 10-meterby CNBair pistol champion from Radford, placed 44th in Atlanta. color.