From the brink of elimination to cruising comfortably through this week’s challenge, Federal Way Police Department Cmdr. Kyle Sumpter said this week’s challenge on “Top Shot All-Stars” was a bit more enjoyable than the grueling trick shot challenge he had to survive last week.

“It was a fun challenge, it was actually something like a drag race,” Sumpter said.

The remaining “Top Shot” competitors faced off head-to-head in a speed challenge using the Sig Sauer P229 handgun. Sumpter’s competition, Adam Benson, actually picked Sumpter, ribbing the History Channel show’s oldest competitor about he and Sumpter being in the “geriatric” division. Sumpter said he thinks Benson’s reasons for picking him were perhaps a bit more competition-minded.

“I think he picked me because he thought I’d be an easy win,” he said. “Because, remember, from the very first moment of this season, everyone saw me limping along with an injury. He told me afterward that he was surprised to see me shoot so well.”

Sumpter would end up having the second fastest time for the main competition this week, behind only Kent resident Kelly Barchand. Barchand, an expert long-distance rifle shooter, expressed some of his concerns about the competition.

“Walking up to the line against Joe Serafini, I’m not exactly a pistol guy,” he said in an in-show snippet. “I’ve seen a couple people do this, I know how this challenge works. I need to be quick, I need to be accurate.”

Serafini himself was surprised at the ruthless efficiency Barchand showed in this competition.

“I picked Kelly because I thought he was going to be an easy match, and he just smoked it,” Serafini said after their round.

Unfortunately, the two competitors facing elimination this week were two of Sumpter’s Season 4 co-competitors, Chee Kwan and Gabby Franco. The duo faced off with a Schofield .45, and had to shoot six rows of targets of varying sizes. The difficulty in the challenge comes in that any miss on a certain row resets the whole row. In the end, Franco won.

For Sumpter, it was difficult to see his two friends from Season 4 in the elimination challenge.

“It was like…I was the dad watching two of my family members going up against each other, with the intent of eliminating each other,” he said. “Not on a deeply emotional level, but on a friendship level. I wanted them to both do well, I wanted them to go deep in the competition.”

“Top Shot All-Stars” airs at 7 p.m. Wednesdays on the History Channel HD (10 p.m. non-HD). Full episode replays and additional content can be found at www.history.com/topshot.