Olympic shooters have time-tested mental exercises they use to get through some of the most stressful moments of their careers: They exhale deeply to steady their nerves. They assess the targets ahead of them. They trust in the preparation that got them there. Then, finally, they’re ready to check in at the airport.
Before the members of the United States shooting team got a chance to fire their rifles, pistols, and shotguns this month in the Paris Games, they had to get them there first. International air travel is already among the most universally exasperating experiences on earth, imagine doing it with a bunch of guns and ammunition in your luggage.
“I’ve learned the hard way about saying, ‘Oh, this is going pretty smooth,’” said Sagen Maddalena, 30, an American rifle shooter who will be competing at her second Olympics this summer. “You can get there six hours before the flight leaves, and it feels like you’re running to the plane every time.”
For globe-trotting shooters like Maddalena, the airport is the crucible before the competition, a logistical bugbear with more hurdles than a track meet. There’s the gear (heavily regulated and physically heavy). There are the airline firearm protocols (byzantine and inconsistently applied). And then there is the paperwork required to merely possess guns in various countries (voluminous).
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