“The medals were there for the taking.”
That was the quick and dirty assessment by U.S. shooter Derrick Mein after a fifth-place finish in Men’s Trap on Tuesday at the Olympics.
It was the second close-but-no-cigar performance by American shooters in these games. Sagen Maddalena finished fourth in Air Rifle yesterday. That must be cause for concern among the USA Shooting hierarchy after a six-medal performance in Tokyo and three medals in Rio de Janeiro.
Paris so far has been a big goose egg.
For Mein, 38, he may never have been under such heat with the temperature in Chateauroux over 90 degrees and the additional heat of chasing an Olympic medal. The competition was something of an endurance test which ultimately Mein failed.
In fact, his entire Olympic experience was under some heat, some of that coming from his own mistakes. He missed two targets in the first eight shots of his first round yesterday, forcing the Kansan to claw and scratch his way back into contention in the next four rounds.
After the second miss in Monday’s qualifying, Mein missed hitting only one target in the following 117 birds and went on a streak of hitting 89 consecutive targets to get into a 6 for two shoot-off for the medal round. There Mein continued his hot shooting, hitting 13 in a row. That got him a spot in the six-man finals.
“I did all I could do today,” Mein said after the qualifying rounds were completed. “And I know I gave myself a chance. That’s all you can ask for. You know, it’s just wait and see. But I feel like I did everything I could. And if it’s not enough, well, it’s not enough.”
Sitting in sixth position wasn’t ideal, but with a real chance at a medal, Mein made what seemed at the time a fatal error. He missed two of the first six birds in the finals and again put himself behind the same eight-ball, just as he was on Monday.
After the second miss, Mein shook his head and looked towards his coach, Jay Waldron, to confirm what he already knew: he was moving slightly instead of staying still, putting his shot off.
The confirmation led to Mein hitting 16 straight birds and putting himself firmly into the medal fight. Still, near the end of stage one, which led to the elimination round, Mein missed and then, in the elimination round, again missed the fifth and final target. Had he hit it, that would have guaranteed him fourth place finish over Jean Pierre Brol Cardenas of Guatemala, who went on to win bronze and was on the edge of silver until he also missed at the end of his elimination stage.
“Unfortunately, when you’re stuck with the six bib, it’s hard to overcome sometimes,” Mein said. “But it is what it is. You know, I gave my best effort. I was proud to be out there representing the USA.”
After Tokyo, USA Shooting’s shotgun coach Jay Waldron said that Mein became totally committed to the game, went 100% into the international trap game, and devoted all of his efforts to returning to the Olympic Games. Now Mein will return home, knowing that if he doesn’t make it back to the Olympics in Los Angeles, his last competitive shot will have been a miss, which Mein says is unacceptable.
Mein says he wants to “get back home, start working out. I got room for improvement. Hopefully, ’28 will be in my book going forward.”
Fuck the Olympics after that disgusting woke shit they pulled at the opening ceremony. And fuck every athlete and employee of the IOC who continues to participate in that shit.