Athlete Feature: Sandra Uptagraff t
Sandra Uptagraff t: No Secret Sauce to Success
The 2012 Olympian is the
steady force of the women’s pistol team. Sure, there are oncoming challenges by those both younger and hungrier, but she remains the face of the team for now. Her perseverance has a lot to do with that and why Rio is defi nitely in her sights too.
What got you interested in the sport? The fi rst time I ever shot
anything was the M16 during the basic marksman- ship portion of Army basic training. I think that’s when it became something that I wanted to try again and get better at.
What motivates you? Striving to be a better
person and be better at whatever task I’m trying to accomplish; but not in a self- ish, self-absorbed way. So, whenever I get a chance to learn or help someone else learn, that gets me going.
What’s the secret to the success you’ve found? There is no secret sauce.
Hard work, determination and perseverance, being fl exible and able to adapt and overcome, are all help- ful to success. But there is no guarantee that you will succeed even if you do ev- erything right. A lot of it is luck, circumstance and tim- ing.
What’s been your most proud moment as a com- petitive shooter to date? When I fi rst started com-
peting you had to earn an invitation to the US Shooting National Championships. I still remember opening my letter to my fi rst nation- als and feeling that rush of excitement and jumping up and down, wanting then to tell everyone about it.
Talk about what fi nally becoming an Olympian meant to you. I’d like to say it felt like
the greatest thing on earth, a lifelong dream come true, but really, it was just a relief. I had been struggling since the 1996 Olympic Team Tri- als to make the team and had come up short every time until 2012. I had put everything I had, physically and mentally into the Trials and had nothing left at the end. I imagined that I would throw a huge party, invite ev- eryone and celebrate when I made the team. But it was as if I had just fi nished an ultra-marathon and you can barely lift your arms or legs when you cross the fi nish line. It’s all you can do to just walk, much less jump up and down and celebrate.
Talk about the challeng- es you’ve had to reach the top level of your sport and how it’s helped form the person you are today? I’ve defi nitely learned
how to deal with setbacks and failure, how to work around obstacles, and have the tenacity to come back and try again when the work-arounds don’t work. Sometimes it’s fi guring out how to overcome tough light- ing on a particular range. Or
a tougher one like getting deployed to Afghanistan, and missing almost a year of training. Then coming home and within a few months, having to make the Pan Am team. I put a lot of pressure on myself to earn an Olympic country quota there, know- ing that if the team did not get one, no one on the wom- en’s pistol team would be able to compete in the Olym- pic Games in 2012. I am the tough, persistent person I am today because of it.
September 2014 | USA Shooting News 23
Photo by Dan Shirey
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