Colorado Champions Road to Gold: Team USA shooting athlete puts career on hold for Paris

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - In less than two weeks, athletes from around the world will descent upon Paris. And many USA Shooting athletes in Colorado Springs are now in their final training days.

Before flying across the Atlantic, we met one woman who put her career on hold to pursue Olympic shooting.

It's a sport where precision and focus, must be mastered.

"In here you can see we have the paper down here and those are some of the shots we've tracked on here," says 2-time Olympian, Alexis Lagan.

Lagan has it locked down in air pistol.

"The targets that we are shooting at are so minuscule and literally the difference of a hairs width can make the difference between you going on the gold medal podium or not being there at all," says Lagan.

The target might be small, but her dreams are big.

"I want to be on the podium, I want that gold medal," says Lagan.

Lagan has competed at big events around the world and racked up some impressive medals along the way. But she's eyeing that top spot on the Olympic podium.

"My ten-ring on my target is about the size of the diameter of an average straw," says Lagan. "And to be competitive at that Olympic level I am going to need to be hitting that straw about 6-7 times per 10 shots. You want a 96-97% average."

The shooting range has been a familiar place for much of her life. When Lagan was younger she enjoyed shooting with her dad and it's something she got back into while attending school at the University of Utah.

"When I was there I learned that this was really a place of meditation for me," says Lagan. "The amount of focus and the amount of discipline not to become too relaxed but not overexcited to really find that middle ground and stay in your element and in your focus for long periods of time was helping me in school. Physics is a difficult degree, and there's a lot of times where I had to be resilient in my studies and I learned that resiliency on the range."

Despite a degree in physics and a law degree in the works, that career is on hold so she can follow her Olympic dream. Shooting for greatness in Paris and beyond.

"I am definitely more focused on my Olympic career and pursuing that podium here in Paris and pursuing that podium again in L.A.," says Lagan. "So we'll see how it goes."

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