Shooting from the Lip

There's something about Josh Lakatos and fast circles: He drives
on them, hangs out in them and shoots at them. Lakatos, 27,
earned a silver medal at the Atlanta Games in trapshooting, a
discipline in which he takes two shots at each of 150 flying clay
saucers. His passion, though, is midget-car racing. He wound up
upside down on an Indiana track in July. "Got a pretty cool
picture out of it," he says. Against his coaches' wishes, Lakatos
was still racing in early September. "I don't ask permission," he
says. "Cool beans? [Lakatos-speak for, That O.K. with you?]
'Cause I'm racing anyway."

Lakatos almost pulled out of the U.S. trials in June because of a
bad back. "I got no back muscles," he says, "so my ass and legs
do all the work." After undergoing daily three-hour therapy
sessions in July, he spent three weeks in Dubai, where he trained
sheik and fellow Olympian Ahmed Al-Maktoum. The sheik's family
spent $250,000 refurbishing his club shooting range to duplicate
the one in Sydney. "The sheiks live in palaces and buy cartridges
a million at a time instead of 4,000 like me," Lakatos says.
"They're kind of stylin'." It's an incongruous style for Lakatos,
who sports an Olympic rings tattoo on his back, has a screen
saver that reads YOU'VE GOT TO BE AN ANIMAL and co-owns a
Pasadena auto shop with his father, Steve. "I'm a grease monkey
at heart," he says.

And a pretty straight shooter.

--Brian Cazeneuve

COLOR PHOTO: RUSTY JARRETT/ALLSPORT