Most successful female shooter in Olympic history honored with Distinguished Service Award
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DAPHNE – The United States Sports Academy has honored American shooter Kim Rhode – the most successful female shooter in Olympic history – with a 2016 Distinguished Service Award for her excellence in the sport over the last six consecutive Olympic summer games.
The award recently was presented in her home state of California by Dr. Gary Cunningham, Academy trustee and president of the United States International University Sports Federation.
A bronze medal winner at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, Rhode is the first athlete, male or female, to medal at six consecutive Olympic summer games and the first to win a medal on five different continents. Rhode is the only woman to win two Olympic gold medals in the double trap event.
Rhode began shooting at age 10 and by age 13 she won her first world championship title in American skeet shooting, after which she was named captain of the All-American Team. She has won 14 national championship gold medals in the International style of shotgun shooting since joining the USA Shooting National Team in 1995.
Her first gold medal came in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where at age 17 she was the youngest female gold medalist in the history of Olympic shooting. She followed her impressive showing in Atlanta with bronze in Sydney, gold in Athens, silver in Beijing and gold in London. Because the double trap event was eliminated from Olympic competition for women in 2004, Rhode has since focused on International skeet shooting, for which she won bronze in Rio.
Rhode won gold medals in the Pan American Games in 2015, 2011, 2010, 2003 and 1999 and was recognized as the USA Shooting Female Athlete of the Year three times from 2007-09.
An avid hunter and an outspoken supporter of the second amendment in the United States, Rhode is an honorary lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and the Safari Club International.
The Distinguished Service Award is part of the United States Sports Academy’s Awards of Sport, which each year serve as “A Tribute to the Artist and the Athlete.”
Based in Daphne the Sports Academy is an independent, non-profit, accredited, special mission sports university The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports. For more information, call (251) 626-3303 or visit USSA.edu.
The Academy’s American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA) museum is open free to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. For more information, go to ASAMA.org.