No matter the year, no matter the continent, Kim Rhode is a clay pigeon’s worst nightmare.
Kim Rhode won’t settle for almost perfect
Rhode’s accuracy has made her a shooting celebrity but a 99-for-100 run in London left her one goal to shoot for.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Rhode, who will compete in the women’s skeet event on Aug. 12, has been America’s top gun for two decades. In skeet, her job is to see a 4.25-inch object whizzing overhead at more than 50 miles an hour, then shoot it with a shotgun. She’s already the first American, male or female, to medal in five consecutive Olympiads. And considering how preposterously accurate she is, she’s probably going to make it six in Rio.
Rhode might not be a mainstream star, but she’s a shooting legend. She’s easily the best female shooter of all time, and since the rules of shooting are the same for men and women, we know she’d outshoot guys most days too. In London, Rhode hit 99 of 100 shots to set a world record and take the gold. No other competitor hit more than 91. (The men’s gold medalist went 123 for 125.) Rhode clinched the gold with two stations to go, and had to stop herself from crying so she could finish up.
That dominant performance earned her the distinction of being only the fourth person ever to appear on a box of Winchester ammunition, along with the company’s founder, Teddy Roosevelt and John Wayne.
But it was only near-perfect. Which means even after all her accomplishments, Rhode still has something left to shoot for.
“It’s just more personal, going for that perfect score,” said Rhode ... “I don’t have anything to prove, other than to myself that I can do this and really show my son that you can have a goal or a dream in life and obtain it.”
This time around, the rules are changed a little bit to even the playing field -- in London, Rhode was able to carry a four-shot lead into the final round. Considering she rarely misses at all, this was virtually insurmountable. In Rio, scores will reset, allowing for a 16-shot shoot-off in the final round. Whatever the format, Rhode is the obvious favorite.
When Rhode first claimed Olympic gold in 1996, she was just 16, a high schooler who needed a chaperone to travel to Atlanta to compete against the world’s best. She took silver in Sydney and won gold in Athens, and then the Olympics opted to get rid of double trap, the event she’d competed in her whole life.
So Rhode switched to skeet, and continued being incredible. She won silver in Beijing and then her 99-for-100 round in London set a world record. Only, Rhode knew something was physically amiss when she competed in London. When she got back to the United States, she realized what it was: she had been pregnant.
“Maybe this isn’t exhaustion from working so hard and traveling to all these different places,” Rhode said in a phone interview Friday. “Maybe there’s a little more to this.”
Rhode is now the mother of Carter, her first and only child. The pregnancy was a difficult one, resulting in the loss of her gallbladder and doctors told her she could never be pregnant again. The road to recovery was long, severely limiting her typical training.
But Rhode is back, and she’s got history in her crosshairs. (I mean, not literally, but you get the point.) If Rhode were to reach the podium in Rio, she’d tie an Olympic record by medaling in her sixth straight games, and she’d be the first Olympian to medal on five different continents.
The 36-year-old likes to point out that Oscar Swahn, a 72-year-old Swede, won a silver medal in shooting at the 1920 Olympics. Rhode would have to keep shooting for another lifetime to become the oldest medalist in shooting history. She doesn’t plan on sticking around for quite that long, but don’t be surprised if she breaks her own record in Rio -- or does it again four years from now in Tokyo.
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