ATHENS - Let's start with the bull's-eye, which is half a millimeter in diameter. How big is half a millimeter?

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That big.

You get 10 points for hitting that. In a 10-meter air rifle competition, you get 60 cracks at it in the qualifying round. If you finish in the top eight, you get 10 more shots in the finals. If you don't hit the half-millimeter bull's-eye with a .177 cal, lead pellet at least 58 times out of 60, you probably won't win.

Jason Parker, Xavier '96, finished fifth in the 10-meter at the 2000 Olympics. He missed the gold medal by two bad shots. The winner scored 597 in qualifying. Parker scored 592. Parker missed the bronze medal by seven-tenths of a point. Seventy shots, seven-tenths of a point. Shooting makes diamond cutting seem random.

"Out of 40 or 50 competitors in any event, 30 are legitimate medal contenders" was how U.S. shooting coach Sgt. 1st Class Bret Erickson put it.

You think this is easy? You think it's like knocking a raccoon off the bird feeder on your deck, from 10 paces? Some of us couldn't hit a tin can from 10 paces. It'd be easier to ask the raccoon to shoot himself.

There are obscure sports in the Olympics. I've covered five Summer Games and I still couldn't tell you what modern pentathlon is, or why they call it modern, since pentathletes have been pentathlete-ing for a few hundred years.

Equestrian is obscure. Do you prefer team dressage or individual jumping? What?

Team handball is obscure. Badminton is obscure, except to Asians and a few northern Europeans. Without Rulon Gardner, Greco-Roman wrestling is inexplicable. Understanding its scoring is like cracking a code. Gardner beat the feared Russian Alexander Karelin in 2000, to win the gold medal and deal Karelin his first defeat in several hundred years. Gardner won 1-0. When big Rulon scored the decisive point, the only reaction from every American journalist there was, "Huh?"

Nobody writes or talks much about shooting. It will be on TV this year, because everything is on TV this year. Maybe you'll watch. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll be inspired to wheel out the Daisy and nail a raccoon or two.

Regardless, Jason Parker, current world champ in the 10-meter air rifle, will be going for gold today. He thinks he can win it. Of course, so do 30 other shooters.

Said Sgt. Erickson: "Shooting is such a fickle sport. There are so many variables: range conditions, weather conditions." Even the rifle itself, if it's not perfectly tuned, can betray a perfect shot. Since 2000, Parker has learned to control what he can. He moved to Cusseta, Ga., to be closer to Fort Benning, where he trains.

He has worked on lowering his emotion and fine-tuning his focus. You can't be thinking about paying the mortgage, feeding the baby or the collected works of Robert Frost when you're trying to put a lead pellet through a pencil point at 10 meters.

"Key phrases calm me," Parker said. "I'm ready" is one. "Show 'em what you got" is another.

He doesn't drink coffee or eat chocolate for at least two days before a match. Nothing like the caffeine jitters to make a bull's-eye a bull's-ear. He prefers not to sleep well the night before; a little fatigue can take the edge off the adrenaline. He practices visualizing bull's-eyes.

"The first 10 shots and the last 10 are the hardest," Parker said. "During the middle of the match, you get into the flow."

In 2003, Parker won the world 10-meter air rifle title after scoring 599 points out of a possible 600 in the qualifying round. He missed the bull's-eye once. By less than a millimeter. Just way off. You get an hour and 45 minutes to fire off the first 60 shots. Parker takes an hour and 10 minutes.

In the finals, you're allowed 70 seconds between each of the 10 shots. After a match, Parker is ready for a rubber room. "Mentally beat up and worn out," he says.

Today, Parker will take his $2,000 Anschutz compressed air 2002 rifle and try to win the first medal ever for the United States in 10-meter air rifle. He has spent four years with that in mind. All he has to do is hit a pencil point 67 or 68 times in 70 tries.

It shouldn't be that hard. After all, look how big the bull's-eye is:

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com