Vincent Hancock needs no introduction when it comes to the Olympics.
His three gold medal victories came in Beijing (2008), London (2012) and Tokyo (2020, held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic). After London, he became the first Olympic skeet shooter to win gold medals in the same event in consecutive Olympic Games.
His winning ways started early. Hancock started competing in skeet when he was just 11 years old. When he was 16, he won his first World Championship title in men’s skeet and went on to win the International Shooting Sport Federation’s Shooter of the Year award.
Now the man, who many in the sport call the greatest of all time, trains at the facility he founded, Northlake Shooting Sports in Denton County. But even though he is going to an unprecedented fifth Olympics, he said he never quite gets used to the feeling.
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“When you’re chasing perfection, there is a little nervousness that goes into it. If I miss this target, I could already be out of it. There will always be nerves that come into play and I just always know that and understand that. Winning another gold, that’s a goal and a dream. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first, fourth or your fifth Olympics, it is still a dream. To do that you have to be almost perfect,” Hancock said.
His road to this point has not been perfect though. In fact, at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, he didn’t medal. It was a turning point in his career. He could either quit, dwell on it or figure out what happened and use the next years to get ready for his great comeback.
He's chasing perfection in a sport with a target shot at about 50 miles per hour with less than a second to make a decision. Despite all the success, he never takes his chances for granted.
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“Team USA is constantly getting better. All of the [skeet] athletes are getting so good that I have to shoot better and better every time to make the team,” Hancock said.
Team USA skeet shooting will carry two men and two women. Hancock is one of those teammates. Two others are his students. Hancock coaches Olympian Austen Smith from Keller and Conner Prince of Burleson at his shooting complex. At the Paris Olympics, he will have the chance to win two gold medals for the first time, as he and Smith will participate in the mixed shooting competition.
“While yes, I have been their coach and I have been there to get them to where they are. It’s not me that is doing it. It’s them as the athlete. I can teach them everything that I know, but they are the ones that have to go out there and apply it. They have been able to do that in an exceptional way,” Hancock said.
He said the shooting complex is more than just a space to train, it's also a place to teach.
“My days of being an athlete are numbered. It’s just an eventuality. At some point, I have to stop shooting. While I love it and will do it for the rest of my life, I don’t have to compete on this stage the rest of my life either,” Hancock said. “If I can show other people how great this sport is and how much it has given me, then that’s kind of my next step — being able to give back to the community that’s given me so much and the sport that has given me so much. I even met my wife through shooting. My daughters are getting into it too. It just has been the most fun of my life.”
Northlake Shooting Sports hosts hundreds of young students weekly. Hancock said it's all to educate the next generation, just like his daughters, in the sport.
Hancock and his team will compete starting on August 2 at the Paris Olympics.
Read about more North Texas Hometown Hopefuls leading up to the Paris Olympics where the Opening Ceremony will officially start the games on Friday, July 26.
