At 35, Vincent Hancock of the United States is seeking to extend what is already a unique record by winning a fourth Olympic skeet men title at the Paris 2024 Games.
He served notice of his intent today as he scored 75 out of 75 on the opening day of qualification for tomorrow’s final.
Earlier this year he spoke to ISSF TV about his varying experiences at the last four Olympics.
Beijing 2008 Games – Skeet men, gold. Hancock topped qualification with an Olympic record of 121, giving him a one shot lead going into the final. After tying at 145-all with Norway’s Tore Brovold he won a shoot-off for gold 4-3.
Going into my first Olympics I was 19 and No.1 in the world going into it. I had already won one world title and multiple World Cups for three years prior.
I was doing very, very well, so there was kind of an expectation for me to go and be very successful at the Games. For me I knew that was my goal, that was my dream, that was what I had been working for. And I had – honest, looking back on it, even just afterwards, at no point in time did I really ever consider not getting gold.
I know that while that’s crazy confidence going into it and probably a little bit of cockiness back then as well, I didn’t know any better. That’s how I was taught to think. That’s how people that I worked with would be on the mental side of things.
That was the sole expectation. That’s what was going to happen. There was no other choice.
So it kind of manifested on its own.
It was an interesting deal. There were a lot of nerves going into it. Obviously it was my first Olympic Games. But I really wasn’t that nervous during the qualification. The nerves really hit during the final.
I had a one-target lead going into it. I missed the same target that I missed three or four times in the match – the low six – and put myself into a tie with Torre Brovold from Norway and we went to a sudden-death shoot-off.
But I knew that I still had that feeling of ‘OK, I still know I am going to win, I just have to do this.’
We broke the first pair, and then he missed on the second pair. And I remember stepping up and it was almost like an out-of-body experience where I was telling myself before I was even calling ‘Pull’ you have just won the Olympics.
And then I called ‘Pull’, I don’t remember calling ‘Pull’, I don’t remember moving the gun or doing anything. I just remember seeing the targets break and then the crowd went crazy and I went crazy and it was kind of awesome.
London 2012 - Skeet men, gold. Hancock topped qualification with an Olympic record of 123 and set another Olympic record of 48 in the final, finishing two hits clear of Anders Golding of Denmark.
In London I had my youngest daughter there, she was with me, and my wife, and so that one was neat too because I actually had my family there.
And also because 2011 was such a down year for me, it was like a redemption year and I wanted to come back from 2011, getting to the point where I didn’t want to shoot any more, I wanted to quit, to be able to come back and not just make the Olympic team but also to win the Olympics again.
Rio 2016 – Skeet men, 15th. Hancock scored 119 in qualifying, missing the cut for the semi-finals by nine places and two hits.
Going into Rio there were a lot of things going on there, things that I definitely could have handled better and I think that if I had then I would have been successful there too. But there were a lot of expectations…there is always a lot of expectation coming from me and nobody has higher expectations of me than myself.
But I let a lot of others kind of influence how I felt and then all the things that were going on down there that were negative were difficult to handle and I just didn’t do a good job.
So that put me out of the running unfortunately. But since 2015 that’s the only final that I haven’t made.
So looking at it from that perspective it’s like, OK, I definitely could have done things better but I’m doing things better now that I was then.
He told USA Shooting: “I was trying to understand what went wrong for me and figure out why. “I knew there were a lot of expectations, but I have always had a lot of expectations. I had to come to the understanding of ‘Why am I doing this? I am doing this because at 10 years old I found something that I loved.’ I needed to make sure that I enjoyed every moment of the process that I can.”
Tokyo 2020 – Skeet men, gold. Hancock finished fourth in qualification, two behind the total of 124 with which Eric Delaunay of France and Tammaro Cassandro set an Olympic record. He won the final in an Olympic record of 59, finishing four ahead of Denmark’s Jesper Hansen.
Going into Tokyo there were a lot of issues I was dealing with on the personal side of things. So being able to overcome all of those to be able to win again – not to mention going through the qualification I was leading until the last round, I had a horrible last round and went from first to having to shoot-off with I think six other people for a place the final – so that was really hard.
But I was able to make my adjustments really quickly, fall back to analyse and discuss with myself what went wrong and what I needed to do to fix it. I was able to make that correction and go into the final and just crush it.
So that one was really fun too. But they are each my favourite because they are each unique of themselves. That’s one of the things I’ve learned to embrace over the past few years, that all this is going to be difficult but it’s also going to be fun. And if life was easy I don’t think it would necessarily be as much fun. You have to go through those difficulties, you have to try things, you have to experience new things. And experience leads to knowledge, and knowledge leads to wisdom.
And wisdom is the thing we are all searching for whether we know it or not.