Kimberly Rhode made her Olympic debut at the 1996 Atlanta Games. She marked it with gold in the double trap, also making its Games debut for women, where she set inaugural Olympic records of 108 in qualifying and 141 in the final.
Rhode had turned 17 exactly one week earlier. But already she was a relative international veteran, having won double trap team gold at the previous year’s World Championships in Nicosia.
Four years later at the Sydney 2000 Olympics Rhode took bronze in the double trap after Pia Hansen of Sweden had improved her Olympic records in qualification and the final to 112 and 147 respectively. Rhode was third in qualification on 103 and finished third behind Hansen and Italy’s world record holder Deborah Gelisio on 139.
At the Athens 2004 Games, where women’s double trap was making its last Olympic appearance, Rhode returned to the top of the podium, Having topped qualification with 110, she won gold in the final with a final total of 146.
Knowing she would need a new Olympic discipline in which to take part for the Beijing 2008 Games, Rhode had re-embraced skeet and qualified to compete in Athens, where she finished fifth in a final won by Hungary’s Diana Igaly, with China’s Wei Ning taking silver.
At the Beijing Olympics, after finishing third in skeet women qualification on 70, two shots behind the Olympic record of 72 established by Italy’s Chiara Cainero, she outshot the Italian in the final but ended up taking silver.
Cainero, who carried a two-shot lead over Rhode into the final, scored 21, but the American drew level with her on 93 after scoring 23, as did Germany’s Christine Brinker. Rhode beat her German rival 2-1 in a shoot-off for silver but lost by the same score to Cainero for gold.
At the London 2012 Games, where the skeet women event took place with a different scoring format, Rhode topped qualification with an Olympic record of 74 out of 75 – one off the perfect world record she had already established.
In the final, which consisted of 25 more shots, she was successful with each one, earning gold by a margin of eight targets from Wei Ning. Her total of 99 out of 100 equalled the world record established earlier in the year by Slovakia’s Danka Bartekova, who was bronze medallist on 90.
Health reasons meant Rhode, who had given birth to her son Carter in 2013, had a troubled build-up to the Rio 2016 Games.
She was second in qualification behind Wei Ning, and then finished fourth in the newly instituted semi-final, where she and her Chinese rival scored 14 out of 16, with Morgan Craft of the United States, who also totalled 14, missing out on the bronze-medal match following a shoot-off.
Rhode needed another shoot-off to claim her sixth Olympic medal after finishing 15-15 with Wei Ning in the bronze-medal match, prevailing by 7-6 after a tense series. Diana Bacosi beat her fellow Italian Chiara Cainero 15-14 in the gold-medal match.
Shortly after failing to earn a Paris 2024 place despite winning the final US trials, Rhode told ISSF she would planned to seek a place at her home Games in Los Angeles four years on…
Asked about her overview on Olympic experience as she looked back on her six Games, Rhode told ISSF:
The big thing is that, for one, I feel I am very fortunate to have had the career that I have. I don’t think you wake up in the morning and say ‘Oh I’m going to go and do six different Olympics.’ I think it’s just something that progressed.
For me I started off in club shoots, and then it was state shoots, and then it was ‘why don’t you try the Worlds?’ and then it was the Olympics…after one Olympics it was, ‘Hey why don’t you try a second, and a third?’
At the end of the day I think it’s just about having a love for the sport, a passion.
What better way to spend your day than travelling the world, spending your time outdoors, taking part in shooting and enjoying the people you meet and the places you visit. That’s really what has me coming back again and again.
It’s really never been about the winning, in my eyes. It’s been more about the people and the competition and the places. If I won it was just kind of like a cherry on top of the cake.
But you still managed to win quite a lot of cherries!
Well it’s one of those things. You don’t wake up and think of yourself as being the best in the world. And having had the career that I’ve had, maybe its that that’s kept me sharp because I’m always looking to improve, I’m never satisfied, I’m always pushing myself.
And at the end of the day that’s what the Olympics represents, overcoming obstacles and people who say ‘you can’t’, and never giving up. If it was easy everybody would do it.
I just enjoy it. It’s something that I truly love, I love that moment in competition when you are down to that single bird and it’s all or nothing. That’s the moment that I thrive for and really love.
So it’s about remembering all the people and the places, because nobody remembers what you shot. Twenty years from now nobody could tell me what I shot unless they Googled it or looked it up. I mean I couldn’t even tell you what I shot at most of the Olympics.
But I do remember the event, I do remember the people, I do remember the fun times and the podium moments and things like that. That’s really what we’re striving for.
Asked to compare her viewpoint as a 1996 Olympian and a 2016 Olympian, she responded:
There’s been a lot of change. When I look at the Olympics, for me it was always about representing my country and wearing that red, white and blue and trying to take in the experience of it all.
When I was 17 I don’t think I realised what it was that I had achieved when I had won my first Olympic gold medal until I got back home and I went back to high school, and I realised how life-changing that was.
I returned, I didn’t grow up in the greatest of areas, and a lot of people looked at it in some ways as hope.
I don’t think I realised in the moment that time what I had done. Whereas as Olympics go along that road of obtaining those medals changes with everyday life. Priorities change, things change, and you’ll the goalposts and different things move, and that’s when you have to be adaptable and persevere.
Definitely each Olympics has been unique. But when I look back to the 1996 Olympics it was a lot less commercialised. As athletes you could go and see all the events. Now you have to be put in for a raffle because it’s so big.
There have been changes, not to say that they are bad, but definitely different. And it’s kind of been fun to see the other side and be part of some of those changes within the ISSF. I’ve seen it now from all angles, being both the athlete and as an ISSF Vice-President, and it definitely gives me a greater appreciation of all the volunteers and the sponsors and the people involved.
It's not just about us as athletes and I think I am really fortunate to have seen a lot of that.
So can you sum up what is special about the Olympics?
When you are at the Olympics you are surrounded by the best of the best in every sport in the world. And you kind of just take that for granted, you don’t even realise how inc redible some of these people’s stories are.
And then when you do take the time to talk to them you find how similar our stories are. The reality is that we all have struggles, we all had obstacles that we had to overcome. And we were all able to be successful and to be there. It’s incredible to be surrounded by so many people that are like-minded.
It’s a very inspiring place to be. And then you come home and yes you do have a lot of events but nothing like at the Olympics - and in a way it is a little shocking. So for me I had to find things to keep myself busy and to do things outside of shooting – that’s probably why I have so many hobbies, just so I didn’t get bored.
After the 1996 Olympics one of the things I did was take gourmet cooking courses. I’m also interested in collecting and restoring antique cars and collecting first-edition children’s books. And I am fascinated with the study of my ancestry.
I have been fortunate to represent the United States at so many Olympics, and with each one there comes a sense of ease. I mean at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics I didn’t know what to expect but as each Olympics has come round I have been able to enjoy them more and more.
Look out for The History Woman, Part 2, where Kimberly reveals the two biggest challenges of her unique Olympic career….