Gary's First Olympic Gold Medal 1964

GARY'S FIRST OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL

The Olympic Gold Medal, Tokyo 1964

"The First Record Shot was an Eight"

In the 1960s, the 300 Meter Free Rifle event was the king of the Olympic shooting events and the United States had not won this event since Morris Fisher's gold medal victory in 1924.  Gary won this event in both the 1962 World Championship (see "1157") and the 1963 Pan American Games (see "The Range Was a Dump") so he was certainly one of the favorites in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.  He remembers that on the long bus ride from the Olympic Village to the range on the morning of the match, a group of reporters surrounded him in the back of the bus.  In those days, media and athletes rode the same buses to the shooting venue.  Their most important question was naturally, "who will win today?"  When Gary answered, "I should win," that became the headline for several international stories.  They must have been amazed that he dared to predict his own victory.  

In those days, the 300 Meter Free Rifle event took 6.5 hours to complete, which worked out to be about one shot every three minutes.  Sometimes a single sighting might take more than a minute with a rifle weighing 17 pounds.   Gary’s 300m rifle was built around a Remington action by Army Marksmanship Unit gunsmiths.  The stock was the same one Gary used in Cairo at the 1962 World Championships.  He still has that stock today and has talked about trying to reconstruct this entire rifle.  After the Tokyo Olympics, Gary had to turn in the rifle and the USAMU shop tore the gun apart, apparently oblivious to the historic significance of this rifle.    (See “1157”).

Shooters' clothing included a leather shooting jacket, under that a thick wool shirt and normal cloth pants.  Shoes for prone were normal athletic running shoes, but for kneeling and standing, Gary wore military combat boots.  Special shooting trousers and shoes had not been invented then.   In addition, Gary fashioned blinders from anything he could find to fit under his baseball cap.  

Gary was described as having "nerves of steel" by the press.    But in his diary entries for the Tokyo competition, he mentions his nervousness twice.   He said that to keep calm the night before his match, he focused on the score he was going to shoot.

The course of fire is 40 shots each in prone, kneeling and standing at distance of 300 meters (or almost three and one-half football fields in length).    No telescopic sights are allowed; coping with the wind is a major success factor.  The center of the target is a 10-ring that is about the size of a tea cup (10 cm).

At that time, shooters could choose the order in which they shot the three positions.    Gary shot kneeling first, but he got off on a bad start.  He discovered a loose rear sight aperture after the seventh shot that probably contributed to his errant shots.    Wind gusts were challenging too.  Gary lost eight points during that first 10-shot series.  That was a disastrous start, but he settled down for the next 30 shots.  His final kneeling score was 384 with 92, 97, 97, 98, but the USSR’s Shota Kveliashvili, the eventual silver medalist, had a 389 to give him a big 5-point advantage over Gary in that position.

Next came standing where he dominated the competition and built up an insurmountable lead.    He dry fired about 15 shots before he started to get his hold to settle down.     It was his strategy to deliberately shoot a 9 on his last sighting shot; it was kind of a superstition.  He held off on what he thought should be a 9.   It was a 10.  He tried shooting another sighter as a 9, but it too was a 10.  He decided to go for record thinking he couldn't miss, but his first record shot was an 8.    After that he was able to “hold and pull smoothly well enough for good nines or tens on every shot.    Only the 37th shot was just outside the 9 ring.”   (Quotes from Gary’s Shooting Diary, see “Gold Medal Diary Entries”).      He ended with series scores of 94, 97, 94, 92.  His 377 standing total exceeded the existing world mark (Hollenstein, SUI) by one point.  It was the highest 300m standing score ever fired in competition and was eleven points over Kveliashvili's standing score.

Next came prone.  The wind was costing everyone points, but Gary knew that any kind of reasonable score would assure him of the gold medal.  He finished with 97, 99, 97, 99 for a total of 392.  His sores of 384 kneeling, 377 standing and 392 prone totaled 1153 -- a New Olympic and World Record.  

This is the preliminary scorecard from the free rifle match.  His final kneeling score was actually 384 and the aggregate was 1153.     The final scoring is done by a Jury and final scores are posted on a scoreboard.

The Free Rifle Scoreboard -- final scores could take as long as 30 to 45 minutes after a shooter finished the competition to be posted. 

Gary with his target pullers and the disc they used to signal his shots.    After they presented this historic scoring disc to him, Gary had to cut its length down so he could get in on the plane and bring it back to the States.    

The target scorers signed the bamboo handle of the disc "Yashiro" and "Saito" (not shown)

 Gary's score of 1153 in Tokyo bettered the existing World Record by three points (Hollenstein) and the Olympic Record set by the USSR’s Borisov in the 1956 Melbourne Games by 15 points.  The silver medal winner was Shota Kveliashvili, USSR, who finished with an 1144, 9 points behind Gary.   The biggest drama for the USA team was waiting for Martin Gunnarsson's final score to be posted to determine whether he would finish third.  When his final score of 1136 came up, it became clear the bronze medal was his; this was a huge surprise and the cause for another USA celebration.  After the match, Kveliashvili offered Gary the mirage band from his rifle as a gesture of friendship.     

Gary with Silver Medal Winner Shota Kveliashvili

With Gunnarsson having been born in Sweden and Gary having grandparents who were born in Sweden, the Swedish press made a big deal out of their Swedish heritage and how "two Swedes won shooting medals for the United States."

To celebrate the two Olympic medals, USA Shooting Team Captain Col. Tom Sharpe took Gary and Gunnarsson to the most expensive restaurant he could find in Tokyo to buy them Kobe Beef steaks.  

The 300m event was the first shooting event in 1964 and their gold and bronze medals set the stage for USA shooters to win six medals in the six shooting events that were on the Olympic program then.  These USA Tokyo shooting victories ended a period of Soviet Union (USSR) domination that began with the 1952 Olympics.  The USA has won six Olympic medals twice since, in 1984 and 2008, but there were 11 shooting events on the 1984 program and 15 in 2008.

In 1964, the Award Ceremony took place the next day after the competition.    Women in Japanese kimonos carried the medals to the award area.  An IOC member presented the medals.  The national anthem was played live, by a band.    The medal winners wore their national warmup suits for the medal ceremony.

Heading for the victory ceremony (Gary is in the center)

Presentation of the Gold Medal by a IOC official (scoreboard in background)

Silver Medal Winner Shota Kveliashvili, receives his medal

Congratulations to Martin Gunnarsson for the Bronze

The flag ceremony begins

(L. USSR Silver; C. USA Gold, R. USA Bronze)

Gary was surrounded by photograph and autograph seekers after the competition.    One family wanted a photo with their little girl:

Gary is holding the presentation box for the medal.

Shortly after the award ceremony, Gary called Ruth Ann at Hastings College from the International Call Center at the range.  He had to order the call the day before immediately after he won the medal.

Lones Wigger and Gary Anderson
Gold Medal Winners Tokyo 1964