She’s Right on Target : Shooter Launi Meili Has Sights Set on Olympic Redemption

For Launi Meili, U.S. Olympic shooter, nutritionist, part-time aerobics instructor, artist, wife and aspiring physical therapist, this was huge. Not big. Huge .

Meili was talking about one of life’s great discoveries--the Knotty Pine restaurant of Cascade, Colo.

“It was a little shack,” she said, recalling the first time she and her husband, Leo Lachambre, stumbled upon it.

Inside were chairs and tables made of logs in a sort of early-frontier motif. And those prices: Pancakes cost $1.05, Meili said, leaving about a half-inch between thumb and forefinger to illustrate their thickness.

Meili and Lachambre make the trek from Colorado Springs to the roadside cafe near Pikes Peak each weekend for a breakfast of pancakes, ham and eggs.

“We spend $3.60,” she said.

Meili, a nutritionist at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, spends her afternoons dissecting and inspecting food served to America’s elite athletes.

On the weekends, she cuts loose at the Knotty Pine.

“That’s why I teach aerobics five days a week,” she said.

The Knotty Pine is not on Meili’s mind as she competes for a berth on the 1992 U.S. Olympic rifle team this week. Trials are being conducted through Friday at the Prado-Tiro Range in Chino.

The women’s three-position rifle competition ended Monday after three days with Meili winning the event with 1,928.1 points. She and Ann-Marie Pfiffner of Dubuque, Iowa, a senior at West Virginia who finished second with 1,923.5 points, made the Olympic team.

Women’s air rifle competition starts Wednesday.

Past U.S. shooting trials were held at one site for all Olympic disciplines--pistol, rifle, running target and shotgun. This year, however, each selection process is being conducted separately. The pistol team will hold two qualifying matches at Prado, Wednesday through Saturday and May 14-17. Running target and shotgun have been contested throughout the year in specified tournaments.

For Meili, such a big competition is difficult to, well, swallow.

“I probably won’t be able to eat,” she said a few days before the competition began.

The woman who treasures the down-home cooking of the Rocky Mountains cannot bear the thought of food when she enters a bunker, dresses in thick canvas gear and prepares her precision Anschutz .22 for a 2 1/2-hour battle of the wits.

She is too nervous.

For someone who has won too many international medals to recount, who has set three world records and more than 100 national marks, who can be as focused as a camera, Meili spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about nerves.

She has a reason. In the 1988 Olympics at Seoul, Meili was, in shooter slang, clicking. She tied for first in the air rifle after 40 shots with an Olympic-record of 395 points out of a possible 400.

Her effort was worthy of the gold medal, except for a new feature in the competition. Instead of awarding medals after the traditional 40-shot match, the top eight had to return to the firing line for a timed 10-shot finale. The addition was supposed to draw attention to a sport that has long been a distant cousin on the Olympic family tree.

Meili was so nervous, she buckled on those final shots. Her first bullet strayed from the half-millimeter 10-ring, and she was awarded an eight.

“I was doing everything I practiced, but I couldn’t hold my gun,” she said of the shaky final. “My mind was telling the body what to do, but there was a missing link.”

Meili finished sixth in a less-than-satisfactory performance.

The final, which added drama and pressure, received little in the way of extra attention. For someone who had been shooting since sixth grade in rural Cheney, Wash., the ordeal was disheartening.

“For a long time, I really didn’t like shooting at all,” Meili said.

Although she continued competing, she was disaffected. She felt as if she had disappointed her family by not winning a medal.

“For the longest time, I didn’t let myself think about (the Olympics),” Meili said. “It really hurt.”

Meili was indifferent for two years after the ’88 Games, wondering why she was shooting and hating it more each day. Her scores, to say the least, were not good. But redemption is a powerful motivator. She was not ready to walk away.

As quickly as it deserted her, the desire to win resurfaced two years later at the 1990 World Championships in Moscow. Meili could tell, because before her match she felt nervous.

Standing on the firing line next to her friend, Vessela Letcheva, Meili started wondering why the No. 1-ranked Bulgarian was better.

“Then I shot 200 straight,” she said, meaning she was perfect after the first half of competition.

A world record seemed possible. So, Meili thought about it, became more nervous and dropped three of her next five shots. Instead of folding as in 1988, she recouped. “I said, ‘Gawd, settle down.’ ”

She charged back, and again was close to a world-record performance. Again, she thought about it, got too nervous and finished fourth.

Meili has tried to control her emotions, but it is a delicate balance. Being nervous before a match is good, but during a match is disastrous.

Meili tries not to think about it. This is a woman who believes that the chaotic gyrations of aerobics complement the regimented motion of shooting at a tiny target 50 meters away.

“I don’t know if it would work for anybody else, but I know it works for me,” she said.

What also works is pottery. Meili said that some day she wants to spend as much time molding clay as she now does firing guns.

Meili, 28, yearns for a piece of the American dream. She wants children. She wants to return to school to study physical therapy. She wants a career.

“It’s huge,” she said. “There are so many things I want to do with my life.”

In the next breath, she talks about the 1994 World Championships in Milan. She has never been to Italy. She wants to go because one of her aunts lives in Rome.

When Meili finally retires, she will leave behind quite a legacy. She already knows what she will miss the most: “The people I’ve met around the world,” she said.

Others to Watch

Glenn Dubis--A member of the U.S. Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning, Ga., Dubis is a two-time Olympian. He won three gold medals and two silvers in the 1990 World Championships.

Bob Foth--Fourth in air rifle at the 1988 Olympics, Foth, 34, has become one of the United States’ best shooters. He won three gold medals and four silvers in rifle competition at the 1991 Pan American Games.

Dave Johnson--He won gold and silver medals in air rifle matches at the Pan American Games and has been competitive in World Cup tournaments.

Bill Meek--The U.S. prone record-holder, Meek, 39, works as a laboratory technician at UC Riverside and lives in Riverside.

Debra Sinclair--She won four gold medals and set three match records in the Pan American Games last summer. Now 23, she was a two-time All-American at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Deena Wigger--Her father, Lones, was one of the nation’s most famous international shooters before he retired to become director of the U.S. team. Her brother, Ron, is a national team member. Wigger, 25, finished 10th in air rifle in the 1988 Olympics but has struggled a bit this year.