A local RCMP officer has traveled to New York City to represent himself, and the country.
Const. Trevor Mack competed in the 2011 World Police and Fire Games Competition held Aug. 26 to Sept. 4, and brought home two silver and one gold in the air rifle competitions.
He won the gold in a team effort where Mack was paired up with a police officer from Germany, and a retired police officer from Nebraska.
“It was unexpected,” Mack said of his gold medal win, the first one for him on the world stage.
He won silver in the prone style shooting event, where he worked with three police officers from California.
Mack’s final win was a silver in the individual air riffle expert category.
The Games were attended by 15,000 competitors world-wide, participating in 65 sporting events with everything from swimming to boxing in the mix.
Mack describes the Games as a way for police officers and firefighters to get together in a non-work environment.
There were shooters from all across the U.S., Germany, Australia, Taiwan and Mongolia, Mack said, naming a few of the
many the countries that sent participants.
Mack is no newbie to the air rifle competition circuit. He has been competing since he was 12 years old and was on both the B.C. Junior and Senior rifle teams.
He took a break from competition after joining the RCMP, but the lure of a world competition in Vancouver, so close to his hometown of Campbell River, was too much to resist, and Mack competed in the 2009 Games.
“I didn’t want to pass that opportunity up,” Mack said of competing on a world stage in his home country.
He explains that once the old taste of competition had kicked in, he was back in the circuit and looking to defend the silver medals he won during the 2009 event, where he lost first place to a police officer from Taiwan.
And while nothing is set in stone, Mack is considering attending the 2013 Police and Fire World Games, which will be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He said more than anything the Games are a good time, with a pretty close-net community of shooters.
Mack said while he used to be more competitive, he now considers the Games to be more of a fun event.
“There’s bigger things in life now than how you compete on the range,” he explained.
