U.S. archery ace aiming for perfection

Pace off a little over 59 feet. Turn around and focus on a target where the optimum strike is four centimeters or, for those with flawless vision, what might appear to be something no bigger than a dime.

Now pick up your handy recurve bow and fire an arrow at it.

Good luck with that.

Brady Ellison did so time and again Monday, a picture of intense concentration and unwavering emotion. He scored 592 out of a possible 600 points in a World Indoor Archery Championship qualifying round at the South Point, a winning result that would have most competitors doing backflips across the exhibit hall, hopefully after they removed those arrows from their quivers, which is what those in the sport of Robin Hood and William Tell call fancy holsters.

"I'm absolutely disgusted," Ellison said. "I didn't shoot well at all and am mad about it. I'm disgusted with how I shot."

The world's best archer and perhaps the best America has ever produced is 23 and interested only in pursuing perfection, of reaching the sort of mythical heights no one with a bow and arrow has known.

Archery is one of the most primitive and honorable Olympic sports, its roots dating to 10,000 B.C., when the goal was not to win gold medals but to feed one's family by killing a wandering woolly mammoth.

It is also exasperatingly difficult.

There is a reason no one has won consecutive Olympic golds, because when you compete at something so precise, so exact that the slightest flinch, the most minuscule of movements can turn a perfect hit into just another decent scoring arrow.

Archery at the Olympic level is as much about breathing and heart rate and muscle movement as it is about timing and accuracy. The nervous ones out there need not apply.

"I missed four shots today by less than an eighth of an inch," Ellison said. "That's how close it gets. One little mental mistake and you're off. As soon as I let it go, I know if it's good or not. Once you release, that's the point of no return. One little mistake and you can barely miss.

"But if you get in a rhythm and in a zone, anyone can step up and win. It doesn't matter if you're ranked 50th in the world or first. If you get on a roll, you become very hard to beat."

Ellison will arrive in London this summer unlike he did in Beijing four years ago, which is to say he has gone from just another guy to the guy expected to win. The Arizona native was 19 when competing at the Olympics in China, 19 and just three years into shooting a recurve bow, 19 and with no real expectation of how he might finish. He was eliminated in the second round of bracket play.

This time is different. The stories about Ellison are endless, from shooting plastic arrows while still in diapers to killing a black bear with a rifle at age 11 to winning junior archery titles at 15. His goals, however, reach beyond any one competition or medal.

"When I am dead, I want people to remember me as the best archer who ever lived," he said. "I want my name to be mentioned first on that list."

He also wants a 600 indoors. He wants better than the 597 he shot recently in Nimes, France, setting a U.S. record and tying the current world mark. He wants to exist where no one has before.

He was 8 and not thinking about an Olympic future when Justin Huish -- the kid who looked like he went straight from a skate park to an archery field -- won the individual gold in Atlanta at age 21. The U.S. hasn't owned such promise in the sport since. Ellison could change all that.

He was born to shoot, archery and hunting a sturdy branch on the family tree. His stepfather, Mel Nichols, is a former professional archer who now stands at events like the one here this week and chronicles each shot so as to help Ellison toward that unending pursuit.

"He doesn't look to shoot 10s, but rather the best shot he can shoot every time," Nichols said. "It's that chase for perfection, that work ethic, that sets him apart. He trains to break world records. Others view pressure and anxiety and fear badly. He reacts to all of it in a great way.

"Brady can walk onto any stage and do this. He would love for a million people to be watching when he's shooting in London. His mind is that strong."

Strong enough to one day be considered the greatest archer in U.S. history?

"The greatest ever in the world," Nichols said. "In the world."

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.