{"id":15549,"date":"2012-07-28T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2012-07-28T22:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=15549"},"modified":"2012-07-30T21:40:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T02:40:52","slug":"rhode-to-history-in-womens-skeet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/rhode-to-history-in-womens-skeet\/15549\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhode to History in Women\u2019s Skeet?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Kim Rhode, four-time Olympic medalist.<\/p><\/div>\n

Every four years, the Shooting Sports emerge from the shadows and take their place among the 26 sports fighting for the attention of billions.\u00a0 Misunderstood, under-recognized and somewhat ill-perceived, USA Shooting\u2019s top stars clamor for their rightful place among the attention-grabbing headliners of Team USA.<\/p>\n

Never before in the history of shooting has the prospect of doing so been within reach, but Sunday in London, the eyes of the world will be tracking every heart-pounding shot fired by a California dreamer named Kim Rhode<\/strong> (actually pronounced ROW-dee). By 9:45 Eastern (2:45 pm in London), Rhode could re-write the annuls of U.S. Olympic history by becoming the first American ever to win five Olympic medals in five consecutive Olympic Games in an individual sport.\u00a0 Think back on the greatest Olympians of all-time \u2013 Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mary Lou Retton, Mark Spitz, Michael Phelps, Dara Torres, Peggy Fleming, Bonnie Blair \u2013 and none of them ever stood where Rhode could potentially be standing on this mid-summer day in London.<\/p>\n

She emerged on the shooting scene as a bright-eyed teenager \u00a0in Atlanta 1996 winning a gold medal in women’s double trap on July 23 that year. \u00a0Sixteen years later she’s still dominating her sport, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 albeit in a different event after women’s double trap was eliminated after the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.<\/p>\n

Among the 17 Olympic competitors, Rhode will face the two women who she battled in the medal shoot-off during the 2008 Olympic Games: Italy\u2019s Chiara Cainero and Christie Brinker of Germany.\u00a0 The scores, however, have steadily risen over the past four years as Rhode set a new world record of 75\/75 targets at the ISSF World Cup Tucson in May.\u00a0 Throughout the 2011 World Cup and World Championship circuit, the minimum score required to advance to the final was 70\/75 targets. The minimum score from the 2008 Olympic Games was 69 targets, so expect to see high scores posted from the Royal Artillery Barracks.<\/p>\n

In addition to Cainero and Brinker, Rhode will have to defeat Chinese athlete Wei Ning, the current No. 3 in the world and Slovakia\u2019s Danka Bartekova who won the silver medal at the ISSF \u201cLondon Prepares\u201d test event in April.<\/p>\n

Format:<\/strong>\u00a0 Shooters fire from eight different designated shooting stations at a series of \u2018singles\u2019 and simultaneous \u2018doubles\u2019 from separate trap houses \u2013 high and low \u2013 located at each end of an arc of a circle of about 40 meters in diameter.\u00a0 Targets are released from zero to three seconds after the shooter\u2019s call.\u00a0 The top-six competitors in each event advance to the 25-target finals.\u00a0 Qualification: 75 targets in three rounds of 25.<\/p>\n

Qualification<\/strong> \u2013 09:00 am \u2013 1:00 pm (London time)<\/p>\n

Finals<\/strong> \u2013 2:00 \u2013 2:40 pm (London time)<\/p>\n

Television: <\/strong>\u00a01:30 \u2013 1:50 pm EASTERN — NBC Sports Network<\/a> OR NBC LiveExtra Webcast<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s 10-meter Air Pistol<\/strong><\/p>\n

Petty Officer First Class Sandra Uptagrafft<\/strong> (Phenix City, Ala.), a reservist in the U.S. Navy, will begin her first Olympic event Sunday, July 29 in Women\u2019s 10m Air Pistol.\u00a0 Uptagrafft won the bronze medal at the 2011 Pan American Games and finished 8th overall at the World Championships in Munich.\u00a0 Husband Eric Uptagrafft<\/strong>, a Men\u2019s 50m Rifle Prone athlete that competes on August 3, is away in Denmark at training camp and will watch the event online to cheer on his wife.<\/p>\n

Sandra will face a field replete with Olympic experience and medals.\u00a0 In 2008, it took a 390\/400 qualification points and 102.3 in the final to win by Wenjun Guo of China.\u00a0 Guo will represent China in London.\u00a0 Olena Kostevych, the 2004 Olympic champion from Ukraine, has returned to top shape and dominated the ISSF World Cup circuit as of late.\u00a0 Another notable contender is Olympic newbie Zorana Arunovic of Serbia.<\/p>\n

Format:<\/strong>\u00a0 In the qualification, women shoot 40 shots in 75 minutes.\u00a0 The shots are fired in the standing position at 10m at a 10-ring target of 11.5mm in diameter.\u00a0 The finals consist of 10 shots from the standing position in a time limit of 75 seconds per shot.<\/p>\n

Qualification<\/strong> \u2013 09:00 \u2013 10:15 am (London time)<\/p>\n

Finals<\/strong> \u2013 11:45 am \u2013 12:05 pm (London time)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every four years, the Shooting Sports emerge from the shadows and take their place among the 26 sports fighting for the attention of billions.\u00a0 Misunderstood, under-recognized and somewhat ill-perceived, USA Shooting\u2019s top stars clamor for their rightful place among the attention-grabbing headliners of Team USA. Never before in the history of shooting has the prospect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,165],"tags":[397,2330],"class_list":["post-15549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bloggers","category-usa-shooting","tag-kim-rhode","tag-usa-shooting-team"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}