1966 World Shooting Championships in Wiesbaden, Germany

"The Team to Beat was the Russians"

USSR-USA Showdown
USA Shooters were "Cold-war Warriors"

"Scheiben-Toni"
Recreated from a post card by an artist in Lexington, NE

The official motif of the 1966 World Championship in Wiesbaden, Germany featured a young boy in peasant clothing signaling a hit on a large wooden target.    He has a target-marking disc in his hand and is calling the result, a near perfect center shot, to the shooters and spectators.  Target marking was mainly done by boys, some children of the marksmen.  The boys had to be quick as no trenches (or pits) were used.  After each shot the boys ran from a safe distance to the targets to score them. The boys took great delight in marking a particularly good score on the target and were allowed to display theatrics in their shot signals. This boy, swinging marking disc and cap, is crying loudly for joy because of the great shot.  

The World Championship motif was based on a famous German shooting motif called the “Scheiben-Toni” or target boy. The original Scheiben-Toni was painted by the German artist Hermann von Kaulbach for the 15th German Federal Shooting Festival in Munich in 1906.  Von Kaulbach was born in 1846.  Before the turn of the century he won a name for himself as the creator of historical-symbolic paintings. 

Herman Von Kalbach b.1846

Von Kalbach's "Scheiben-Toni"

  

In 1966, 60 years after the creation of the Scheiben-Toni, the 1966 Wiesbaden World Championship became the setting for an epic battle for the USA Shooting Team where “the team to beat was the Russians.”  The stage for this USSR-USA showdown was first set in the 1950s when the USSR decided they could demonstrate the superiority of their communist system by winning in Olympic and international sports.  Shooting was one of their priority sports.  The USSR led shooting medal counts in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics and the 1954 World Championships.  In response, President Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1956 establishing the U. S. Army Marksmanship Unit.  A primary USAMU mission was to win medals in international competition.  Loosely translated, that meant beating the Russians.  Gary has often remarked how USA Shooting Team members in the 1960s were “cold war warriors.”  He said, “we may have been friends with the Russian shooters on a personal level, but on another level, our mission was to beat the Russians.”  

Army shooters had some successes in the 1958 World Championship in Moscow, but the first real break-through came in the 1962 World Championships when Gary "stunned the sport-shooting world by winning four individual World Championships, setting three world records, and beating the Russians on every range and also beating a record set by his "hero" Anatoli Bogdanov of the Soviet Union."   (quoted from blog story “The World Shooting Championships, Cairo, Egypt, 1962”; Subtitle “1157”, posted October 26, 2012).   Then in Tokyo, 1964, the USA won the Olympic Shooting medal count over the USSR. (See blog story  “Gary’s First Olympic Gold Medal, 1964; Sub-Title "The First Record Shot was an Eight", posted August 18, 2013).   Tokyo ended 12 years of Soviet Union domination in international shooting and set up the confrontation in Wiesbaden to decide whether the USA had indeed become the greatest shooting nation in the world.        

One other factor that made the World Championships of the 1960s so important was that during that era, a World Championship gold medal was as big a deal as an Olympic gold medal.  50 countries participated in the 1966 World Championship.  The program included 17 rifle, pistol and shotgun events.  

Gary’s dominance of the rifle events in the 1962 World Championship carried over to Wiesbaden.  Shooting conditions in Wiesbaden were challenging because they shot on an open range with a cover, but no protection from the wind.  The 50-meter matches came first.  Gary won the 50 meter standing and 50-meter 3-position events, again.  In the 300-meter free rifle event, he broke his own World Record with an 1156, three points better than Tokyo.    He won a silver medal in 300m standing with a 375 that was tied with the gold medal score.  He won a second silver medal in the 50-meter standard rifle event with a wind-blown 565, one point away from the gold medal score.  He added a bronze medal with his 550 score in the 300 meter Army rifle event.  

Gary's standing position 1966

Altogether, Gary won three gold, two silver and one bronze medals and set one new World Record.  His most exciting victory came in the 300-meter free rifle event where the last position was standing.  By then the crowds of spectators were gathered behind Gary and the Russian shooter Gerasimenok.  That mean they were leading the competition for the individual gold medal.  But with two shots remaining, Gary was 2 points behind Gerasimenok and both were ahead of the World Record at that point.  Then the Russian shot two 8s and Gary finished with two 10s.  His last shot was an X!    Gary wrote about this experience in his diary for that day, 21 July 1966:

In my first 16 shots I was 15 points down.   In the last 24 shots I dropped only 10.   I had the same basic hold all the way through, but because I was getting only nines at the start, I gradually tightened up my conditions of acceptance.  I kept working harder and harder until I started getting 10’s.  I used nothing but hold and slow squeeze until the last three or four shots when I began a quick press.  By the last shot I felt so weak I didn’t know if I had the strength to hold it, but somehow I got an X.  This makes World Championship Number Seven.”

Gary's scorecard for 300m
Notice the last string standing

Waiving from the victory stand!

During these World Championships, Gary shot a unique 50m rifle that featured a new stock design and a bolt that extended under the rifle so he could operate the bolt from the left side (he is a left-handed shooter).  There were no left-hand actions available at that time (they weren’t available until the 1980s).  This marked the first time he did not have to come out of position after each shot to reach the bolt and reload the rifle.   Gary designed the stock and the under-rifle bolt extension that were made by USAMU gunsmiths.  He also had USAMU gunsmiths make a stock with the same design for his 300-meter rifle.  

Gary's design of the bolt extension he first used in 1966

Winners of gold, silver, and bronze medals were given valuable prizes.   Gary came home with three new rifles, a Nymphenburg Diana (Goddess of the Hunt) porcelain statue and an Omega watch.

Gary with the Nymphenburg Porcelain Statue
The Silver and Bronze shooters were from East Germany

Nymphenburg Porcelain

Diana, Goddess of the Hunt

The RWS ammunition company presented Gary with a gold coin

The 1966 World Championship was not without drama and politics.  At the time, the ISSF was beginning to discuss whether women could be allowed to compete in regular events as members of their national teams.  ISSF shooting events were not identified as MEN’s events, but merely as competition events.  The ISSF agreed to add a limited number of WOMEN’s events to the World Championship program starting in 1958 so by then there were both regular competition events and separate WOMEN’s events.  The presumption was that the regular events were MEN's events, but the ISSF Rules did not identify them as MEN’s events.  Previously, and going back as far as 1938, a few individual women had competed in so-called MEN’s events without controversy, but they were not a threat to win anything.  In 1966, however, Margaret Thompson was a threat to win something and since the USA had interpreted ISSF Rules to mean she could shoot in all events, she qualified in the team trials for both the USA 50m and 300m teams.  Whether Margaret would be allowed to compete became a big controversy just before the World Championship.  In the end the ISSF decided to follow their own rules and allow her to compete.  Every team could have two shooters per 50m relay and Team Coach Bill Pullum decided to squad Margaret and Gary together.  Margaret more than held her own and made shooting history by being a firing member of the USA gold medal teams in both the 50m and 300m team matches. 

The 1966 USA World Championship Team of 32 men and 7 women.

By winning the 300m rifle team gold medal, the USA team won the prestigious Argentina Cup Trophy*, for the first time since 1930.  Team members were Anderson, Foster, Thompson and Wigger.  If you look closely at the picture of the USA 300 meter team being awarded the Argentina Cup Trophy, you will see that the flagpoles have only ISSF flags, no national flags.  Moreover, there were no national anthems played during the 1966 Championship.  This was because West Germany, as the World Championship host, would not allow the East German flag to be flown or anthem to be played on West German soil.  They did allow a strong East German team to compete and this time, unlike 1978, 1980 and 1984, there were no politically inspired boycotts.  The ISSF proceeded with the Championship with the stipulation that since the East German flag and anthem could not be used, no athlete would have his/her nation's flag raised, or national anthem sung during award ceremonies.    Instead, all flagpoles at the victory stand displayed ISSF flags and all hymns played were the ISSF hymn.

USA 300m team Anderson, Wigger, Foster, Thompson accept the Argentina Cup Trophy

The General Gamal Abdel Nasser Trophy was first presented by the United Arab Republic (UAR, Egypt) during the 1962 World Championships in Cairo.  It was to be given to the most successful country in each World Championship.   The USSR won the trophy in 1962 and since the UAR was a Soviet client state in the early 1960s the UAR’s clear intent was that this trophy would go back to the USSR in 1966.  When it became clear that the USA, not the USSR had won the Nasser Trophy in 1966, the Egyptians tried to change the rules, but no matter how they manipulated the rules (gold medals, total medals, medal point schemes, etc.), the USA came out on top.  The USA team of 32 men and seven women won eight of 15 team events; Russia won four.   The US team won nine of 22 individual events; Russia won six.  Twelve world records were set, nine of them by US shooters.

The 1966 USA Shooting Team had confirmed the results of Tokyo and established itself as the leading shooting nation in the world.  They took the Nasser Trophy that was intended for the Russians back to the USA.  The 1956 USA goal of “beating the Russians in shooting” was realized 10 years later in Wiesbaden.  

The Nasser Trophy was awarded to the USA in a ceremony at the end of the World Championship.  The ceremony did not take place at the shooting range, but at a reception for the USA Shooting Team at the Hotel Schwartzer Bock, the USA Team Hotel (This was also the night when the great tie-cutting escapade took place. See blog story "Two Pieces of the Berlin Wall, posted April 14, 2014).  Why was the presentation not done at the shooting range?  This was most likely because the Egyptians did not want a public demonstration of how their plan to lionize the Soviet team had not worked.   General Chafik Mehanna, President of the Egyptian Shooting Federation and member of the ISSF Executive Committee, gave sterling silver bowls to most outstanding USA medal winners.    We believe there are only six of these bowls in the United States.  

The Nasser Trophy presentation with Foster, Jones, Boyd, Anderson and Blankenship
with Chafik Mehana and Frank Orth (USA)

Close up of the Nasser Trophy Silver Bowl with Arabic writing

The World Championship Medals

Gary and Ruth Ann immediately after the 300m match

Gary knew before he left Wiesbaden that he wanted to defend his title at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

* The Nasser and  Argentina Cup trophies are now retained on permanent display at the German Shooting Museum in Coburg, Germany (http://www.schloss-callenberg.com/deutsches-schutzenmuseum/).