Team USA’s Vincent Hancock and Kim Rhode won a gold medal in the Skeet Mixed Team event at the 2024 ISSF World Cup for Shotgun in Rabat, Morocco, on Monday, February 12.
Hancock, a three-time Olympic champion, was perfect in qualification with 75 targets, while Rhode missed one bird in the second round to finish with 74 targets. The team entered the final with 149 points from qualification, one point ahead of the second-ranked team, Georgian shooters Yaroslav Startsev and Elizaveta Boiarshinova.
The U.S. team’s combined score matched the ISSF qualification world record of 149.
The duo of Hancock and Rhode went on to defeat the Georgian team in the Skeet Mixed Team gold medal match, 45-40, to claim victory. Like his performance in qualification, Hancock was perfect in the final. Rhode dropped three targets in total, two in the third round and one in the fourth round.
Six-time Olympic medal winner Rhode, who is a member of the NRA Board of Directors and an ISSF Executive Committee member, is currently in the hunt for a spot on the U.S. team to compete at her seventh Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
After the Skeet Mixed Team final, she said to ISSF, “We’ve been enjoying Morocco, enjoying the competition, doing our very best to take in everything and try to get ready for Paris. The most important thing is that the USA will be winning those medals and that we have the best shooters representing the country. We all have to do the best we can and let the chips lay where they may.”
Hancock is also vying for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team that will compete at the Paris 2024 Games. He was described in an ISSF article about the competition as “a picture of calm and confidence in the wake of this latest World Cup gold.”
See the full results of the 2024 ISSF Shotgun World Cup Rabat competition at the ISSF website.
Learn more about USA Shooting at usashooting.org.