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It’s a world away from other competitions.” When I hear people say that, I have a hard time believing they’ve ever been to the Olympics. “I’ve heard people say you shouldn’t be intimidated by the Olympics because they’re just like any other competition. “It’s unlike any other competition,” he adds. I’d never experienced anything like that.” “I walked in on the second row right behind the flag,” he notes. Although McPhail remains disappointed about that outcome, he describes the overall Olympic experience, particularly the opening ceremony, as surreal. He ultimately missed the cut by three-tenths of a point, just a hairline on his shots. He tied for eighth place in the qualifying round and went to a shoot-off for the last spot in the finals. He was considered a medal contender in the 50-meter prone rifle competition. “When he sold me the rifle, I told him that gun’s gonna go the Olympics,” recalls McPhail. He took with him to the 2012 London games the Anschutz 1613 he bought from coach Weigel back when he was a teenager. And that led to the realization of a childhood dream: competing in the Olympics. McPhail continued to establish himself as a formidable foe on both national and international stages. That meant a move to Fort Benning, Georgia, for the Wisconsin natives. Army and was assigned to the Marksmanship Unit, an elite group of the world’s top shooters. Shortly after earning his degree, he enlisted in the U.S. His success as a rifle competitor earned him a spot on the shooting team at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, where he met his wife, Kari, who shares his sharp-shooting enthusiasm. Every day of pheasant-hunting season during the seventh and eighth grades, he’d hurry home after school to meet Weigel and head out into the field. “Without him, there’s no way I would be where I am today,” the 34-year-old says of his childhood mentor.
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And it’s been quite the journey getting there.Īlthough hunting of all sorts was a family affair - “We didn’t discriminate in my house,” he says with a laugh - it wasn’t until McPhail was in his early teens and was taken under the wing of family friend Bernie Weigel that shooting evolved from a hobby to a way of life. Come this August, he’ll go into the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as the world’s best rifleman. Growing up in the small southwestern Wisconsin town of Darlington, Michael McPhail was indoctrinated into hunting culture early on.