Shooter earns record fifth straight medal

You, too, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Al Oerter.

Meet Kimberly Rhode, the first American with individual medals in five straight Olympics, after a golden, record-setting, nearly perfect performance.

Rhode won the women’s skeet shooting Sunday, tying a world record and setting the Olympic mark with 99 points – meaning she missed once in 100 shots. She was eight targets better than silver medalist Wei Ning of China and nine better than Slovakia’s Danka Bartekova, who topped Russia’s Marina Belikova in a shootout for the bronze.

Rhode won in double trap at Atlanta as a teenager in 1996, took bronze in that event four years later at Sydney, reclaimed the gold at Athens in 2004 and won the silver in skeet at Beijing in 2008.

Now, golden again.

“It’s just been an incredible journey,” said Rhode, strands of glitter intertwined with her blonde hair. “And ultimately, I couldn’t be happier for bringing home the gold for the United States.”

Lewis, Oerter, Joyner-Kersee and Bruce Baumgartner are the other American individual medal winners in four straight Summer Olympics.

Rhode’s at five now, and at 33 years old, she’s not planning to stop anytime soon.

“I would like to learn from her,” said Wei, the silver medalist, looking at Rhode and smiling.

Rhode becomes the eighth U.S. woman with at least five individual Olympic medals – speedskater Bonnie Blair and Joyner-Kersee each have six, while Shirley Babashoff, Janet Evans, Shannon Miller, Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin also have five.

Pretty good company, by any measure.

“It’s been an overwhelming experience,” Rhode said. “Every emotion hits you at once.”

So did a slew of memories – some good, some not.

Rhode has dealt with her share of issues, like her gun being stolen after the Beijing Games (an anonymous donor provided a new one worth about $20,000, and police eventually recovered the now-retired first one) and a cancer scare.

Others weren’t so daunting, like having her poodle eating her airline ticket to London and having to scurry to replace her husband’s lost passport.

Everything worked out. And Sunday, things couldn’t have worked out any better.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it,” said her father and coach, Richard Rhode.

Kim Rhode was 10 when she starting shooting competitively, and the sport is simply not cheap. Her parents – both shooters – supported the plan even if it meant major financial sacrifice along the way.

“We still owe on our house,” Richard Rhode said.

“We’ve refinanced it so many times,” chimed in mother Sharon Rhode.

“But what do you do when your child has a dream?” Richard Rhode continued. “I think people do that. They sacrifice for their kids. And we wouldn’t change a minute of it. All we can do, pardon the pun here, is bite the bullet.”