Went to a different sports circus. Saw the elephant. Don’t feel a pressing need to go back.

It was interesting, though. On several levels.

1. The woman I went to report on didn’t qualify for the final. Brenda Shinn of Riverside nearly missed the target twice, in 40 shots, and that is fatal in shooting, where near-perfection is required.

2. This is an intensely … intense … sport. Imagine William Tell having to shoot the apple off his son’s head with his crossbow … and then think of him having to do it 40 times in 70 minutes. Which is what the women did to qualify for the final. Forty shots, and they all have to be close to perfect or disaster ensues. You can see the shooters fighting to keep focus without becoming rigid. It’s a struggle. And fascinating.

3. How do you watch a shooting match? Oddly enough, as if all those people with guns were Tiger Woods on his backswing. That is, you need to be quiet. Volunteers passed before the three rows of spectators with signs in English and French asking for silence. A couple of cell phones went off, and heads swiveled and glares shot out … and I thought the volunteers might attack the owners.

4. Air pistols, at least of the sort Olympians use, make minimal sound and generate no apparent recoil. You could stare at a woman with her gun aimed at the tiny targets 33 feet away … and have no idea when she had let off a shot. Because 44 people shooting 40 times in one session makes for so much aural overlap that you can’t tell by listening. And because the shooter’s arm doesn’t move.

The shooters squeeze the trigger so gently, you can’t discern any movement. Thus, even if you’re only 30 feet or so away from the shooters, as I was, I wasn’t sure when Shinn (or anyone else) had shot unless she 1) lowered her arm and 2) I looked up and saw, via video screen, that a shot had landed.

Air pistols, by the way, make a sort of metallic clacking sound, when fired. Nothing deep and guttural, like Dirty Harry’s .44 magnum, for instance.

Oh, and in the realm of China’s Over the Top Olympics, consider my latest misadventure.

I got to the press area of the venue (the Beijing Shooting Range Hall) and went into the auditorium about half an hour before the scheduled 9 a.m. start. There were a few people in there. No fans. I looked at the eight shooting lanes, and I was thinking they would cycle the 44 shooters through in groups of eight, during qualifying.

But a few minutes passed, and no one else came in, and I decided, “this is weird.” I went back into the work room, and said, “is qualifying held in there?” And one of the little girls who run all the press venues said, “No, that is in Hall B.”

So, Beijing has two indoor shooting halls. One with, like, 100 lanes for shooting that the qualifying was done at. That room has lots of space for shooters but almost none for spectators. And then the other hall, where I had started, where the eight finalists came over to shoot it out — and observers actually can come in and sit down.

Anyway, I hustled over to the next building in time to see Shinn shoot. And when qualifying was over, most of the crowd (plus several thousand more people) migrated over to the posher building to see the eight finalists go at it. (The Chinese woman won; happy ending for the hosts!)

And in the back of the shooting range is the outdoor facility.

This is a country where guns cannot be owned. So what are they going to do with these grand and brand new facilities when we all roll out of here at the end of the month? Turn it all into very short bowling alleys? Might make more sense, in that working class neighborhood, than shooting alleys for people who don’t own guns.

Or maybe the People’s Liberation Army takes them over.