Joe Bennett rooting for the underdog in an Olympic sport that “feigns death”

Joe Bennett spent half an hour watching the final of the women’s 10-metre air rifle competition at the Olympics. Photo: Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via AFP

Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton-based writer and columnist. He has been writing a column since 2017.

OPINION

There are mysteries and there are certainties. One certainty is that I have just spent half an hour of whatever time remains to me on this earth watching the final of the women’s 10-metre air rifle competition at the Olympics. One mystery is why.

Obviously, it doesn’t matter that I spent half an hour in this way. As Larkin observed of time, however you use it, it goes. Nevertheless, competitive air rifle shooting ranks pretty high on the list of pointless activities and watching other people do it ranks higher still.

I wasn’t the only spectator. There was a sizeable crowd present to watch young women firing guns at targets, but it seemed that most of them were close supporters of one or other of the competitors. I did not have that excuse.

And not only did I not know the competitors, but I also knew nothing of the sport. Indeed, before today I hadn’t known that 10-metre air rifle shooting existed as a thing. But now that I have seen it, I cannot unknow its bizarreness.

Eight young women stand with their rifles. They are dressed in what look like motorbike leathers. When one of the women is eliminated, she walks away from the range, and it is then you discover that she cannot bend her legs because the leathers are somehow stiffened. This isn’t sportswear. It’s an exoskeleton.

In addition to her leathers, each competitor has some sort of contraption over her eyes to help with aiming, a cap or visor or pins to keep her hair out of the way and earplugs so that noise does not distract her. None of this makes for a pretty look, but she isn’t trying to look pretty. She’s trying to aim.

Picture an air rifle. What you’ve pictured is nothing like these air rifles. They bristle with sights and gauges. By the time you’d lined up a rabbit with one of these, it would have reproduced. Twice.

Competitors have 50 seconds to fire a shot. The secret to success is immobility. The competitors go into a zen state. They seem hardly to breathe. Anything that could animate their body is shut down, any life, emotion, nervousness, zest. If they could still their hearts they would. The best shooter is the one closest to death. This is a form of anti-sport.

The act of firing is imperceptible. But on the television screen, a mark appears on a target and a score comes up. Almost every shot is almost a bull’s eye. Victory in this game depends on the size of those two almosts.

After each shot the shooter rests her rifle on the stand and tries to get closer still to a state of death. If she has fired a good shot, she does not smile. If she has fired a bad shot, she does not frown. For not doing is at the heart of what she does. This is a sport of self-erasure. There is nothing for a spectator to watch. And it’s gripping.

After every second shot, the last-placed shooter is eliminated. She puts a bit of plastic through the breech of her rifle to render it safe and then she walks stiff-legged back to the seats. And as she goes, she re-enters her existence. A shy smile unfurls like a bud. Or her face puckers with disappointment. She undoes the tabs of her exoskeleton and, almost human again, she sits down.

Soon they were four. Only three get medals. The American shooter let the nerves in, and they sprayed her next shot wide by several catastrophic millimetres. As she waded back to the seats her face fell like a cliff.

The Swiss shooter got the bronze. As she waded back her face lit like a torch. She flung delighted arms around her coach’s neck.

A Chinese shooter remained and a Korean. Their scores were tied. I wanted the Korean to win because she was the underdog and because she was 16. How does a 16-year-old get involved in a sport that feigns death?

They took up their rifles for the deciding shot and settled deep into doing nothing, seeking to shrink that nothing to even less. After 20 seconds of nothing, the Chinese woman fired. She scored 10.3. The Korean girl fired. She scored 10.4. I clenched my little fists. The two shooters did not react. They rendered their rifles safe. They turned to face their supporters on stiff legs. A minute later the Korean girl was crying.

And I was half an hour older. That much was a certainty. Why, remained a mystery.