RIO DE JANEIRO _ Globe is an old mining town with 7,532 people in Arizona's Gila County, about 80 miles east of Phoenix in the Pinal Mountains. It was named after prospectors found a globe-shaped silver nugget.
In its early years, it was known for outlaws and fugitives. Phineas Clanton, whose brother was in the shootout at the OK Corral, lived in Globe after serving a prison sentence for a stagecoach robbery and is buried there. The Apache Kid, who did time in Alcatraz and orchestrated several brash escapes, had his final trial in the Globe Courthouse in 1889, then escaped again while being transported to prison in Yuma. Big Nose Kate, a prostitute and longtime companion of famed gunfighter Doc Holliday, was a resident.
Globe also is home to Brady Ellison, the greatest archer who ever lived. Or at least the guy who says he wants to be.
He is not your typical archer, with combed hair and muted statements. His hair flows unkempt, his beard isn't neatly trimmed. He often has a fishing hook attached to his tattered baseball cap. He wears jeans and cowboy hats. He lists professional bull rider Lane Frost, who died in a competition in Wyoming in 1989, as his idol. He regularly hunts in his free time _ deer, boars, elk, bears, mountain lions, bighorn sheep. He has tattoos.
One is of the interlocking Olympic rings, and instead of being hidden away on his ankle or shoulder or wrist, a private symbol of achievement, it's on outside of his forearm. So when he pulls the bow back, everyone sees it.
You'll see it Saturday at the Rio Olympics, where Ellison leads a three-man U.S. team that won the silver medal in 2012 and that he insists "outshoots that team from London, hands down." But the big moment for Ellison at Rio's Sambodromo, the Carnival parade showground converted into a 70-meter recurve archery range, comes on Aug. 12.
That's when the individual men's competition is held. That's when the one thing Ellison doesn't have will be awarded.
He is the only person to qualify for seven straight World Cup finals. He's the first three-time indoor and outdoor champion. He broke the U.S. record with 697 points (out of a possible 720, or a maximum of 10 points for each of 72 arrows) earlier this season, the fourth highest score of all time. He has an Olympic silver medal in the team competition.
"There are other ways to have a great career," Ellison, 27, said earlier this week. "But this is our moment. The Olympics are the big one."
These are his third.
In Beijing in 2008, he was knocked out in the second round of the 64-man bracket when he suddenly started shooting left and, just 19, couldn't figure out how to correct it.
"Too young, inexperienced" he said.
In 2012, he went out in the round of 32 again. Archery was held in storied Lord's Cricket Ground, a massive circular venue with capricious winds that tormented and eliminated many of the world's best shooters.
"Incredible venue with a lot of history, horrible for the shooters," Ellison said. "You couldn't tell any wind direction, you couldn't tell anything. It came from every direction. The flags on the targets pointed in opposite directions. Everyone had shots where you'd see them look back at their coach at be like, 'What?'
"People got lucky on when they were shooting. A lot of big names went out to things they shouldn't have."
Now, Rio.
The Sambodromo showed promise during last year's test event, with grandstands on either side blocking the wind except for the last 10 or 15 meters before the target. But organizers listened to archer's suggestions and erected temporary walls to create a pure competition environment with minimal wind.
How good is it? South Korea's Kim Woo-jin shot 700 in the 72-arrow ranking round Friday and broke the world record.
Ellison was next at 690.
It is the fourth time he's shot in the 690s this year and the latest confirmation that, as he put it, "I've been able to find something" in what can be a fickle, frustrating sport.
Two things have happened. One is that Ellison married Slovenian archer Toja Cerne following the dissolution of his first marriage. The other is, after eight years at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, he moved back to Globe, where he was born.
The timing was interesting. He left last fall, just as the $14 million, 42,000-square-foot Easton Archery Center was opening on the north side at the Chula Vista campus, with a 70-meter indoor range, with a 30-bed dormitory, with a high-tech equipment workshop and a 3-D motion capture system.
Instead, Ellison and Cerne live in his rural home at 3,500 feet in the mountains of eastern Arizona. He's spent the last few years building a 70-meter outdoor range in his backyard, and a 25-meter indoor range.
"Great facility, I love it," Ellison said of Chula Vista. "Just me mentally and the things I like to do, it's better for me to be back home."
Life in Globe is slow, quiet, relaxed. There are lakes nearby for fishing. Hunting is plentiful for the guy who shot a bear with a bow when he was 11.
"Within an hour of my house," Ellison said, "you have mule deer. You have javelina, mountain lions, bears, elk. We have turkeys. We have two types of sheep. You have your desert bighorn and your Rocky Mountain bighorn."
