USA Shooting Team at Paris Olympics 2024: Full list of skeet & trap players qualified ft. Vincent Hancock & Austen Smith
USA Shooting took to their X (formerly Twitter) account to announce the eight shotgun athletes who qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The names of the eight trap and skeet athletes who have qualified for Paris 2024 are:
Rachel Tozier - Women’s Trap
Ryann Phillips - Women’s Trap
Derrick Mein - Men’s Trap
Will Hinton - Men’s Trap
Conner Prince - Men’s Skeet
Vincent Hancock - Men’s Skeet
Austen Smith - Women’s Skeet
Dania Vizzi - Women’s Skeet
Vincent Hancock, who has won three gold medals at the Olympics, has made it to his fifth Olympic shooting team. Hancock emerged victorious in the US Olympic trials in the men's skeet category and will be leading the eight-man group in shotgun events at the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris.
The U.S. shooting team's Austen Smith, a 19-year-old upcoming star, qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics. She won a silver medal in skeet at the 2017 Junior World Championships followed by a bronze in 2018 and a mixed team gold in 2019.
The other Olympic team members include 2023 World Cup gold medalist in Mixed Team Skeet Conner Prince, Tokyo Olympian Austen Smith, world silver medalist Dania Vizzi in Women’s Skeet, Tokyo Olympian Derrick Mein, 2023 Junior World Champion Ryann Phillips, Staff Sergeants in the US Army Marksmanship Unit, Will Hinton and Rachel Tozier in trap.
Kim Rhode, who earned individual shotgun medals at six Olympic Games between 1996 and 2016, finished fifth in the skeet trials that ended Sunday, missing out on the Paris team.
Amber English, Tokyo Olympic women's skeet gold medalist, placed sixth in the trials whereas Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Kelly Browning finished 7th in the trap event on Saturday, with both missing out.
Two US Army soldiers will compete at 2024 Olympic Games in Trap Shooting
During the USA Shooting Shotgun Olympic trials, Will Hinton and Rachel Tozier from the United States Army Marksmanship Unit secured spots in Olympic traps for the Paris 2024 games.
Tozier, a native of Missouri, secured her spot in the women's trap category at the Olympics after beating 49 other shooters in the Olympic trials final. Meanwhile, Hinton, who hails from Georgia, earned his spot in the men's trap category after defeating 121 other competitors.
After earning a spot on Team USA, Hinton expressed his views in an interview (via divshub.net):
“It hasn’t set in right now, but it’s pretty awesome. “And at this level of competition, every single target and point matters. So making the team after a challenging start lets me know my training is working."
He continued:
“I came in quite a few targets back, so it’s been a grind this entire time, so I am still kind of processing the work I put in and where I am now. Everything I’ve been doing, you know all my training, has put me in where I am at so I have to trust in that, and I am just happy to be on the team.”
Tozier in an interview expressed her delight in earning a spot on Team USA, saying (via divshub.net):
“Making the Olympic Team has been a goal of mine for several years and the fact that I made it just feels fantastic and shocking all at the same time”. There are not really words and I don’t think it has really hit me yet, but when I was a senior in high school, I wrote that I wanted to make the Olympic Team on my board of things to do, so it’s nice to be able to cross that off.”