The American Vincent Hancock won his fourth Olympic shooting gold in men’s skeet on Saturday, edging out his younger compatriot Conner Prince, who settled for silver on his Games debut. Lee Meng Yuan of Taiwan took bronze.
Hancock, 35, is only the sixth athlete to win the same Olympic individual event four times. He won gold in Beijing (2008), London (2012), Tokyo (2020) and Paris. He missed out in Rio in 2016, finishing just 15th.
Hancock’s fourth gold was the result of a narrow 58-57 victory over Prince, 24. There were regular high-fives between the pair as they egged each other on.
“It was good to see him shooting the way he was and knowing I was going to have to bring everything I had to beat him,” Hancock said of Prince.
“I’ve been telling him for several years that the only person who could break my records is him. He just proved it here that he’s ready for this stage. He has a long road ahead of him and he can be as good as he wants to be.”
Hancock followed Prince in the six-shooter final round and capitalised on a late wobble by his compatriot. The mentor in him wanted Prince to win, he said, but the fierce competitor was not ready to budge.
“That’s the hardest part because I really wanted him to win but at the same time I also wanted to win,” Hancock said. “I’ve always told him, ‘I’m going to teach you everything I know’, and it couldn’t have worked out any better, whether it was gold or silver.”
For Prince, competing against Hancock was a great experience.
“He’s my coach and he’s the man to beat,” he told reporters. “He’s probably the greatest shooter in the world, and for him to go number one and me number two, it is honestly a dream.”
In June, having missed the final at the Lonato World Cup, Hancock told Reuters it was a “wake-up call” which produced “a few little epiphany moments”.
He trained for Paris, he said, by using “distraction shooting” sessions, featuring “a crazy mixture of everything you can possibly think of.
“So loud music, car horns going off, people yelling in your ear, walking beside you, banging metal trays near your head … My wife comes out making all kinds of faces and saying all kinds of stuff, and jumping up and down – anything they can do to make me miss.
“It’s helpful, because there’s no way to mimic the nerves and the pressure that you’re going to feel in the Olympic Games, and that’s about as close as I’ve found to be.”
He also said he would go for gold one more time in Paris, in Los Angeles in 2028, but would increasingly focus on the business aspect of his sport.
“I feel like, for whatever reasons, God has blessed me with the ability to go out and break targets and to shoot a gun really well,” Hancock said.
“To provide others with the ability to come out and do the sport that I love, that’s kind of where my career has been transitioning to. How can I make a bigger impact than just being an athlete and just going out and trying to win medals?”
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“I want to have opportunities to build more shooting ranges around the United States.”
Elsewhere at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre on Saturday, Yang Ji-in of South Korea won the women’s 25 metres pistol after a shoot-off with Camille Jedrzejewski of France.
Yang and Jedrzejewski were tied on 37 points, forcing the shoot-off the Korean won 4-1, in her Olympic debut.
“This gold medal has proved I am the world’s best right now,” said Yang. “I will have to train harder to try to put the flag highest once again in LA.”
Jedrzejewski said she struggled to control her emotions in the final shots.
“I lost maybe because my emotions were running very high but I’m happy with my silver,” she said. “There was a lot of emotion in the hall, and it was a really intense competition.“
Veronika Major of Hungary won the bronze, also via a shoot-off, denying Manu Bhaker of India a third Paris medal.
“I was very happy to go to the final in the first place,” Major said. “This is the greatest moment of my career so far.”