Lagan earns gold at national championship
Alexis “Lexi” Lagan, Boulder City’s first female Olympian, sat atop the podium after taking home first place in air pistols during the 2022 National Pistol Championships in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 3-13.
“I’m happy to get a win,” Lagan said. “I would have liked to do better, but overall this event was a success for what my coach and I were training for.”
Even with experiencing victory, Lagan remains hard on herself to do better, knowing the competition leading up to the 2024 Olympics in Paris will only get tougher.
“These weren’t my best scores, but I kind of anticipated this,” she said. “I’ve been doing really well in training the last few weeks leading up to this match and I told my coach that I felt I was starting to peak. Every athlete goes through peaks and valleys, the high and lows, so my coach told me to use this opportunity in competition for training and work through my valley so we can try to push my peak higher.”
Battling with her valley early, Lagan placed fourth after the qualifying rounds with a score of 561 points, before rising to the occasion in the finals to leave victorious.
Edging out a victory, Lagan scored 250.9 points in the finals, finishing ahead of Suman Sanghera (247.1 points).
Competing in sports pistols, Lagan found herself faced with adversity, finishing tied for fifth in the finals with a score of 5 points, after finishing the qualifying round in first place with three-day total of 1,712.
“Sports pistols is usually my better event, so I’m very disappointed,” Lagan said. “I started out well before the finals. It was definitely a bummer, but it’s something we’ll work on during training.”
Lagan’s next stop takes her to Puerto Rico for a training session, followed by the World Championships in Cairo, Egypt, in October while she continues training for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“I’m super excited to go back to Egypt,” Lagan said. “The range there is over the top. Everything is exactly what a shooter would want. It’s like they went to the shooting council and asked, ‘Hey, what would make the perfect range?’”
Contact Robert Vendettoli at BCRsports@gmail.com.
