Military Rifle, Prone, 300 metres, Men

Norway’s Otto Olsen fired a perfect score in this event. This was one of five medals, and three gold medals, won by Olsen in Antwerp. Olsen returned to the Olympics in 1924 at Paris and added three more medals, including one gold.

We do not have complete results for this event, nor all final placements. We have used multiple sources, including USA, Swedish, Danish, Swiss, and French sources. However, in Finnish sources there is some controversy about the placement of Vilho Vauhkonen. He shot 59 in the event and was to be in a shoot-off for the 2nd-5th places. Finnish sources state that Olsen, Kuchen, and Paroche engaged in the shoot-off but Vauhkonen initially did not. A Finnish official then noted that he had shot 59 and should have been in the shoot-off. Vauhkonen shot a round, scoring 58, which should have tied him with Léon Johnson.

Per the Finnish sources, another shoot-off was ordered between Vauhkonen and Johnson, but Johnson refused to take part, apparently feeling that Vauhkonen had not participated in the original shoot-off. Vauhkonen shot another round, scoring 51.

Vesa Tikander, director of the Finnish Sports Museum, notes, “The Finnish shooting team left Antwerp believing that Vauhkonen had earned a silver medal, bronze [at] the very least. However, no medal for the individual event was sent to Finland. Ernst Krogius, the Finnish IOC member, promised to investigate. On 15 December 1920 the Finnish daily Uusi Suomi published an interview in which Krogius announced that Vauhkonen’s shoot-off result of 58 points had now been recognized and that the Finnish shooter had been awarded third place in the individual competition. Interestingly, Kalle Virtapohja, a Finnish shooting historian, has found that according to the records of the Finnish Shooting Association, Vilho Vauhkonen received his individual Olympic bronze medal in a ceremony held at the annual assembly of the association on 3 June 1921. However, there is no physical proof of this: Vauhkonen’s family has no recollection of such a medal.”

As noted we have examined multiple other sources from other countries. All of these sources that list a fourth- and fifth-place finisher have Vauhkonen in fourth and Paroche in fifth. The shoot-off score of 56 for Vauhkonen was given by Swedish sources, per the late Swedish Olympic historian Ture Widlund.