Dan Ackman - Best Ranger Competition

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By DAN= ACKMAN
May 2, 2006; Page D8

Fort Benning, Ga.

If you spend the day running in full body armor, racing through obstacle courses, battling with pugil sticks, shooting machine guns, and jumping out of helicopters, what do yo= u do in the evening to wind down? If you're an Army Ranger fixing to be the be= st Ranger, you might go out and march all night with a 45-pound rucksack in = the pouring rain. Fall behind and you'll miss the next day. And that also mea= ns missing the next night -- another all-night march, this time through the muddy Georgia woods, orienteering through the darkness with map and compass.

These events are just part of the Best Ranger Competitio= n, held over 60 straight hours one weekend last month at Fort Benning. Open to Ranger Qualified individuals -- mostly the Army elite, but with a= few Marines and Navy men in the 3D"[Rangers]" mix -- i= t is one of the most brutal competitions going, making a decathlon seem like a wee= kend at the beach and running a marathon an excuse for taking the afternoon of= f. After the second all-night march, and perhaps a couple of hours' sleep on= a cafeteria table, the soldiers are placed on a 2,000-meter obstacle course called Darby Queen, where they race up and down hillsides stopping only to scramble up, over and under obstacles with names like Tough Nut and Dirty Name.

Ask a Ranger for a comparison between Best Ranger and any other contest, and he will insist there is none. Sgt. John Sheaffer, for instance, has run 50-mile races, but = he says jaunts in shorts and running shoes "don't compare at all, not e= ven to the first day. There is nothing like it."

Sgt. Sheaffer, age 32, made = this assessment during a rare rest period on the second day of the competition= . It came after he and his partner, Mikhail Venikov, a 22-year-old specialist, had just run up a hill where a simulated improvis= ed explosive device had wounded a fellow soldier (a dummy -- this is still a training exercise). After pulling the man to safety, they moved to a "stress shoot," which means running between stations and stoppi= ng to fire pistols, shotguns and machine guns at a variety of targets. These= and other "Ranger Stakes" events test military skills, including, i= n a bow to Ranger tradition, the tomahawk throw. The entire competition tests strength, endurance, will -- and, arguably, sanity.

The Best Ranger Competition has been held between two-man teams at Fort Benning -- where Rangers are te= sted and trained -- for the past 26 years, with two canceled due to war. This = year just a handful of competitors had tried the event before, so the race was wide open. But Sgt. Sheaffer, whose team plac= ed second in 2004, and Spc. Venikov established a commanding lead after the first night's march, which was cut short -- just 18 miles -- because of lightning storms, and held on to win= .

The 157-pound Sgt. Sheaffer,= a native of Delaware, and the six-foot-t= wo, 200 pound Spc. Venikov, born in Kazakhstan= , seemed a bit of an odd couple. They were thrown together by the coaches of the 75th Ranger Regiment. While Sgt. Sheaffer brought savvy skill to the competition, Spc. = Venikov, who looks like he came straight off an Army recruiting poster, displayed physical dominance early on, winning the pugil-sticks fighting competition, one of the few e= vents where the competition is individual rather than by team. The 75th, based = at Fort Benning, dominated the competition this year, taking five of the first 10 places. Of the 26 team= s to start, 15 finished.

Historically, Rangers were infantrymen in Ranger units; = but in recent years soldiers in other units, even in other branches of the armed forces, have been permitted to attend Ranger school and earn their Ranger tags.

For combat arms officers in any unit, a Ranger qualifica= tion is all but essential to advancement through the ranks, says retired Gen. David E. Grange, a former Ranger instructor and commander of Fort Benning. "It's n= ot because the top guys look down on you; it's because the bottom guys look = up to you." Ranger training, and the competition -- both involving mini= mal sleep -- test, he said, "whether you can still make decisions when y= our brain is numb." About 1,500 soldiers graduate from Ranger School annually -- about the same number drop out -- and Rangers make up about 1= % to 2% of the entire U.S. Army, according to Col. K.K. Chinn, the current com= mander of the Ranger Training Brigade.

Both Sgt. Sheaffer and Spc. Venikov, whose fam= ily moved to Sacramento, Calif., when he was seven, have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are former high-school wrestlers. They showed their strength as well= in an event they didn't win, the Darby Queen obstacle course. After negotiat= ing the "skyscraper" -- a four-story building that the soldiers cli= mb without the benefit of stairs or even ropes -- in fine style, they exited= the obstacle from the front rather than the side and had to climb it again (t= his is the Army and rules are rules). But they scrambled up even faster the second time and still finished the event within a minute of the lead team= .

That team was made up of lieutenants Donovan Duke, a vet= eran of both Iraq wars, a= nd John Agnew, the only reservist in the competition, who served in Bosnia and who will graduate from the University of Kentucky Law School this week. Though he may not be the toughest Army Ranger, he was close, and figures = to be the toughest lawyer in any courtroom by far.

The runners-up displayed the diversity within the ranks.= In second place were Capt. Wesley Davidson, a graduate of North Georgia College, and Joshua Eaton, a West Point graduat= e and the son of a general. Lieutenants Duke and Agnew placed fifth.

The competition also featured a former Harvard fullback,= Spc. Grady Smalling, 27= , who left his banking job to become a Ranger after 9/11, signing on as an enli= sted man, he says, "because I wanted to be the guy with the gun going thr= ough the door." He wound up fighting in <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">Iraq and finishing eighth i= n the competition.

The Best Ranger Contest was an extension of being a Rang= er, "testing myself and seeing how far and fast I can go," Spc. Smalling said. His teammate was 22-year-old Sgt. Thomas Payne, another ex-wrestler, who foug= ht in Iraq and Afghanistan. He signed on to compete, he said, because "it seemed like a fun thin= g to do at the time."

Mr. Ackman is a writer based in Jersey City, N.J.<= o:p>

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