BEIJING • After another painstakingly close call, Colorado Springs still isn’t golden.

Olympic Training Center shooter Keith Sanderson nearly gave the city its first gold medal of the Beijing Games but blew a late lead Friday night in a fifth-place finish in the 25-meter rapid fire pistol event.

Sanderson, 33, collapsed with back-to-back disastrous series in the third and fourth rounds of a fIVE-round, six-person final in which competitors fired five shots at a time at targets 2½ feet apart.

He finished 3.6 points behind gold medalist Oleksandr Petriv of the Ukraine. Germans Ralf Schumann and Christian Reitz won silver and bronze, respectively.

“I shot horrible,” said Sanderson, a member of the U.S. Army Reserves. “That third round was pretty bad. I was just lucky they all hit the target. If you guys saw what I saw, you would probably vomit.”

A newbie on the international shooting scene, Sanderson attributed his breakdown to a lack of experience.

“When you get the adrenaline going, your perception of time changes,” he said. “I thought I was running late. I had an incredible fear of having a late shot, and I was like a half-second early. And nothing was even close.”Sanderson would have become the sixth Colorado Springs resident to claim a medal.

Shooter Matt Emmons won a silver in 50-meter rifle prone, shooter Corey Cogdell won a bronze in trap, shooter Jason Turner won a bronze in 10-meter air pistol after a North Korean tested positive for a banned substance, wrestler Adam Wheeler won a bronze in Greco-Roman and gymnast Joseph Hagerty won a bronze in the men’s team competition.

The best finish for Sanderson in a major international event is second, coming at the 2007 Pan American Games. He was a bronze medalist at the 2007 Munich World Cup and placed fifth at the 2006 world championships.

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