| | Event type
Free Pistol, 30 metres, Men
| Date | 11 April 1896 — 9:00 | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Olympic | |
| Location | Skopeftirion, Kallithea | |
| Participants | 5 from 3 countries | |
| Format | 30 metres. Five six-shot strings. Score for each string determined by multiplying target hits by points scored. Target scoring 1-6. String possible 216. Total possible 1,080. | |
After the first pistol event of the 1896 shooting competition, the Paine brothers realized that they were far superior to the competition, mostly consisting of Greek shooters. They elected that whoever had not won the first event (military pistol, John Paine) would sit out any future events, so that they would not embarrass their Greek hosts. Oddly, Sumner Paine won this event with the exact same score (442) that John had scored the day before in the military pistol event.
| Pos | Competitor | NOC | Targets Hit | Points | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sumner Paine |  USA | 24 | 442 | Gold | ||
| 2 | Holger Nielsen |  DEN | – | 285 | Silver | ||
| 3 | Ioannis Fragkoudis |  GRE | – | – | Bronze | ||
| 4 | Nikos Morakis | GRE | – | – | |||
| 5 | Georgios Orfanidis | GRE | – | – |