Cresson shooter seeks a record third straight gold at Rio Games

The Olympics grabbed Vincent Hancock’s attention when he was 7, when he watched his teacher carry the Olympic torch through his hometown of Eatonton, Ga., on its way to the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

Four years later, having just taken up skeet shooting, he was competing at the Atlanta Olympics shooting venue, Wolf Creek Shooting Complex. After the second day of competition, Hancock realized that shooting sports were his future and Olympic gold was his life’s ambition.

Now Hancock, who now lives in Cresson, is the two-time defending gold medalist in men’s skeet, having left a bigger, more indelible mark on Olympic competition in his sport than the Olympics ever did on him. The world’s No. 1-ranked skeet shooter leaves for Rio de Janeiro and his third Olympics on Monday with a new goal: to become the first competitor in any of the shooting sports (pistol, rifle or shotgun) to win gold at three consecutive Olympic Games.

The gold in Beijing in 2008 was Hancock’s expected breakout, officially moving his name to the top of the sport’s pecking order after coming into the Games ranked No. 1 in the world. He followed that with another, perhaps more surprising gold in 2012 in London after a subpar 2011, becoming the first skeet shooter to repeat as Olympic champion.

The Rio Games, he said, are for the continued growth of the shooting sports. If anyone can move that needle, it’s Hancock, whom five-time Olympic shotgunner and teammate Glenn Eller called “the greatest gun pointer that’s ever lived” in a story for Garden & Gun.

“The more we can draw headlines to my sport, the bigger it can grow,” Hancock said. “Obviously in Texas it’s growing extremely fast, and it’s also growing around the world. I’ve been to 27 countries now, all because of this sport.”

The Olympic tradition provides fans the opportunity to get acquainted with sports that aren’t in the limelight. Shooting sports definitely qualify, and confusion surrounding the individual sports is part of the barrier for new entrants.

The Olympic shooting sports are pistol, rifle or shotgun. Olympic skeet is a shotgun sport, and considered the most demanding shotgun shooting sport in the world.

The shotgun shooting sports include trap, skeet and sporting clays. (Sporting clays is not an Olympic sport.)

In skeet, the clay pigeons are hurled from a low and high house; in trap, the targets are shot from one height.

But what makes Olympic accuracy nearly impossible for the masses are the subtle differences between the more popular American skeet and Olympic skeet: in Olympic skeet, the butt of the competitors’ over-and-under must initially rest below a yellow line on the shooter’s vest, and he must mount and shoot only after the target is in the air, traveling at 65 mph at all sorts of angles. That’s around 15 mph faster than the targets in American skeet.

Hancock started shooting American skeet at 10 before moving to sporting clays, which instead of being played on a field set up with eight stations in the shape of a half moon, is set in a field or wooded area, mimicking hunting conditions.

He built up his chops enough to give Olympic skeet a try almost two years later, and in 2005 at 16 he entered the open division, which is basically skeet shooting’s big league, where the competition becomes international.

He entered seven competitions in 2005, medaling in every one and putting the sport on notice. All he’s done since then is win.

During competition that means total concentration and focus, but also the exact opposite of total concentration and focus. To stay single-minded, Hancock chooses a song or two he likes and listens to it on repeat while shooting, trying to retreat to that place in his brain where he thinks about nothing, while intensely concentrating on the fragile saucer careening across the sky, manipulated by windy whims.

In Beijing, it was Sarah Bareilles’ Love Song. In London, it was Payphone by Maroon 5. Country star Jason Aldean has been a regular contributor to Hancock’s success as well, but Hancock hasn’t chosen tracks he hopes to lock in with in Rio.

He’s more concerned with selecting the right companion songs than he is with the Zika virus or worries over the infrastructure in Rio’s Olympic Village. Heck, in London, he said Olympic officials were still putting the finishing touches on his apartment when he walked through the door.

“I’d sleep on the ground if I had to,” Hancock said. “It’s the Olympic Games. Over six billion people will watch it. This is an amazing opportunity to be a part of something so much bigger than myself and even my sport.”

This story was originally published July 27, 2016 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Cresson shooter seeks a record third straight gold at Rio Games."