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Military athletes come up big in Beijing

BEIJING — One more U.S. military Olympian took home a gold in the final days of competition in Beijing. That made a total of two medals — both golds — for the 13 service members competing.

Five shots away from his medal, Army Pfc. Vincent Hancock opened the door for Tore Brovold of Norway with a miss in the 25-shot men’s skeet final. Brovold, 38, had the break he needed.

But Hancock, 19, a member of the Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning, Ga., wasn’t daunted by falling behind.

“It made me more determined,” said Hancock, who beat Brovold in a shoot-off Aug. 16. Hancock and Brovold were tied at the end of competition with scores of 145 shots out of 150, an Olympic record.

In the shoot-off, Brovold hit two targets, which Hancock matched. Brovold then missed one of his next two targets, and Hancock ended the drama by knocking off two targets for the title.

Hancock was the second member of the Fort Benning unit to win gold. Army Spc. Glenn Eller finished first in men’s double trap. They were among nine soldiers and four airmen who competed in such varied events as Greco-Roman wrestling, race walking, shooting, fencing and modern pentathlon.

Four competitors besides Hancock wrapped up their performances in the latter half of competition.

Army Staff Sgt. Keith Sanderson of Camp Casey, South Korea, finished fifth in men’s 25-meter rapid fire pistol. He set an Olympic record in qualifying with a score of 583 but struggled in the finals.

“That was my first time going into a final in first place,” said Sanderson, 33. “You try to prepare for it mentally and stuff, but there’s nothing you can do, so it was quite distracting.”

When Army Maj. Michael Anti, 44, missed for the sixth and final time late in his match Aug. 15, he knew he probably had lost any chance of earning an Olympic medal in the men’s 50-meter rifle prone competition.

“After that shot, a 9.9 out on the right, I had a gut feeling that one would take me out of the final,” said Anti, also of the Army Marksmanship Unit.

Anti, competing in his fourth Olympics, was correct.

The 2004 silver medalist in the 50-meter rifle three-position event finished ninth with a score of 594, missing the eight-man final by one position. He said following the match that this probably would be his last Olympics.

Air Force Capt. Kevin Eastler’s Olympic career came to an end Aug. 16 at the finish line in National Stadium.

Eastler announced his retirement from race walking after finishing 43rd in the men’s 20-kilometer race walk in a time of 1 hour, 10 minutes and 48 seconds — nearly 10 minutes behind gold-medal winner Valeriy Borchin of Russia.

“I wished I could have ended on a better note, but I had so many injury issues coming into the Olympics that I didn’t have any great expectations,” Eastler said. “I just wanted to do my best, and that’s what I did.”

The final performance by a U.S. military Olympian came Aug. 21, when Air Force Capt. Eli Bremer placed seventh in the running portion of the modern pentathlon.

A member of the Air Force World Class Athlete Program, Bremer finished 22nd in a field of 36 with 5,204 points.

Bremer knew two rounds into shooting he wasn’t going to challenge.

“It started out really badly,” he said. “I sat myself down and kind of said, ‘You’re better than this,’ and I refocused and I started shooting a lot better. But I dropped 10 points in the first two shots, and you can’t do that and expect to do well at the Olympics.”