At Age 53, Don Nygord Has a Shot at the World Cup Pistol Title

Every person has a sport that’s right for them, one they can excel in.

That’s what a friend told Don Nygord. All you have to do is find it, she said.

After a series of false starts, Nygord, a two-time Olympian, found his sport, and he modified her adage in the process.

Once you find it, stick with it.

Nygord, 53, is a 12-year member of the U.S national shooting team, which will compete at the first World Cup shooting competition held in the United States, at the Peterson Prado Tiro Ranges in Chino today through Saturday.

Although Nygord grew up in Oregon, which he describes as an area where a lot of “informal shooting” goes on, his first sports had nothing to do with guns. Nygord was a wrestler and fencer at Oregon State University.

“I tried fencing and enjoyed that,” Nygord said. “I tried wrestling. I wasn’t bad at it, but apparently I wasn’t right for it.”

The right sport surfaced while Nygord was in the Air Force in 1960.

“I was asked to come out and try out for the base pistol team after bragging about how I could shoot bottle caps off of rocks at unimaginable distances,” Nygord said. “It turned out to be more difficult than I thought, but I took to it rather quickly.”

Six years later, Nygord became the national civilian champion.

“That was the height of my ambition at the time,” he said. “Then after I laid off for a while, I kept getting these things in the mail that kept inviting me to the tryouts for the U.S international team, based on some shooting I’d done casually. Finally, one year (1978) I decided to go and see what they were like, made the U.S. team and made it every year since.”

Nygord will compete in the free and air pistol competitions at the World Cup on Wednesday and Thursday, and will be competing for an available slot in the 1992 Olympics. In pistol competition, the shooter fires 60 record shots over a 2 1/2-hour period from a distance of 50 meters--165 feet. The target has a 1 1/2-inch center ring worth 10 points and concentric rings that decrease in value by one point.

“We believe that shooting is probably 90% mental,” Nygord said. “There’s probably 25 people that, as far as skill level goes, are capable of winning these matches, but there’s probably five or six that win 80% of them.”

Although shooting does not command the same attention and respect in the United States as it does in Europe, Nygord has made a name for himself internationally.

In the Seoul Olympics, where Nygord had the distinction of being the oldest U.S. Olympian, he tied for ninth place. At that, though, he scored the most points that any American ever has in Olympic shooting.

Training takes up a great deal of Nygord’s time, and it is not simply a matter of going down to the local range and firing a few rounds. Nygord does weight and aerobic training to build strength and endurance, and loads up on carbohydrates before competition.

“There’s an old joke that NRA stands for Not Really Athletes, but that’s not true anymore,” Nygord said.

Mental strength is also a factor, which Nygord exploits through a technique called visualization. It is a technique Nygord divides into two categories, strategic and tactical.

In the first type he might visualize himself as a gold-medal winner to boost his self-image. The tactical technique involves going through the actual firing of the gun in his mind immediately before competing.

This week’s competition may be a pivotal point in Nygord’s career, since, he said, his performance has been erratic lately. He did not finish well in a recent competition in Mexico City, but did very well in a National Rifle Assn. competition.

“After the ’88 Olympics we had to give some serious thought to whether we would compete or not,” Nygord said.

“Age isn’t necessarily a barrier, not everybody is in the same shape at 57 or 27 as any other.”