Newport Beach : City Officers Win Gold in Police Olympics

Two of the city’s finest shot, climbed, hurdled, long-jumped and ran to the gold at the World Police and Fire Olympics held this week in San Diego.

Police Officers Neil Harvey, 27, and Mike Pule, 33, teamed to win a gold medal Tuesday in the pentathlon at the annual Olympics among police officers and firefighters that draws competitors from around the world. Harvey and Pule also captured silver medals in individual pentathlon competition, Harvey in the open division and Pule in the seniors.

In this pentathlon, competitors shoot on two target ranges, climb a 20-foot rope, sprint the 110-yard hurdles, long-jump and finish with a three-mile run. In team competition there are 10,000 possible points; in individual, 5,000 points.

Going into the three-mile run, the Newport Beach officers were 80 points behind a police team from Los Angeles--the same team that had beaten them by just four points in the qualifying state Olympics in June. But it wasn’t going to happen again.

“We saw it as going nose to nose against Los Angeles,” Harvey said. “David versus Goliath. And we remembered if our run had been one second faster in June we would have won.”

At the end of the race, the beach town finished 500 points ahead of the big city.