By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2008

BEIJING, Aug. 16 -- The gun is a Beretta DT10 Trident double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun, unmodified, with a 28-inch barrel, European walnut stock and forend, cross-bolt locking system and adjustable trigger shoe. The first time Vincent Hancock took it out of the box and out to the target field his father had built in the back yard, he pulverized 98 of 100 targets. "This will work just fine," he told the Beretta rep who sent it to him. He was 14 years old. He never has used another gun in competition.

Late Saturday afternoon, at Beijing Shooting Range Hall, he lifted it to his face one more time, the wood slightly worn where it meets his cheek, and squeezed the trigger twice. Pow! Pow! Two pinkish-orange skeets, each 110 millimeters in circumference and traveling 60 kilometers per hour, exploded into neon clouds, and suddenly Hancock spun around, ejected the spent cartridges into the receptacle and raised his right arm toward the stands in triumph -- all in one move. His left arm clutched the gun.

With that, the gold medal in men's skeet went to a 19-year-old kid from Eatonton, Ga., about halfway between Atlanta and Augusta, who has been the best skeet shooter in the world by some measures for at least three years. After hitting 24 of 25 targets during Saturday's finals, Hancock hit all four in a shoot-off tiebreaker, topping Norway's Tore Brovold.

"I saw the targets really well on those two pairs," Hancock said of the shoot-off, "and I crushed them."

There should have been no doubt, as Hancock is the world record holder and No. 1-ranked skeet shooter in the world, except that these were the Olympics, and this discipline requires the stillest, calmest hands. And Hancock isn't exactly a model of coolness to begin with when he's competing, pacing around between turns, swaying back and forth nervously as he waits to shoot.

"I'm obviously a very nervous person. I can't sit still," he said. "I pace around -- that helps me calm down. . . . I try to take the anxiousness and turn it into energy I can focus into my shooting."

Perhaps it was nerves, and the anticipation of being a half-dozen shots from victory, that got to Hancock on his 20th target of the finals -- when he missed, drawing gasps from the crowd and allowing Brovold, Hancock's good friend who earlier this year matched his world record at the European Championship, to tie him by being perfect the rest of the way.

With both shooters sitting on 145 targets out of a possible 150, it required a shoot-off between the only two men to post perfect 150 scores in international competition. One would have to miss before this match would be over, and Hancock girded himself for a long fight. When Brovold missed one on his second pair, Hancock felt himself clutch with excitement. There was never any doubt he would hit his last two targets to win.

"I was definitely not expecting him to miss," Hancock said. "But I could feel the nervousness building up inside of me, so I was hoping it wouldn't last too much longer."

In the moments after you step down off the medal stand with a hunk of gold around your neck, you are not so much a hero as a dog on a leash, being led from one point to the next, each stop another obligation. You shake a lot of hands, visit doping control, sign your name to some documents, stop in the mixed zone to speak to reporters, then a news conference to answer the same questions all over again.

"Where are we going now?" Hancock asked at one point to those holding the leash, as he was led into another room. "Oh, the waiting room. What are we waiting for?"

What Hancock really wanted to do was see his family -- his father, Craig; mother, Susan; and his new bride, Rebekah. His father, himself a former competitive trap shooter, is the one who had taught Vincent to shoot, introducing him to the sport at around the age of 11.

"He was always a good shot, from the time he started out," Craig Hancock said. "But he really came alive when he was around 14 years old."

That's also around the time Vincent came into possession of the Beretta, made by an Italian manufacturer whose history dates back nearly 500 years and one of a handful of gun-makers that dominate the competitive shooting market. By 16, Hancock was winning the international skeet world championship in South Korea, becoming the youngest world champ in history. Ever since he found out you can go to the Olympics in shooting, winning a gold medal has been his chief goal.

To maintain his shooting eye, Hancock plows through six or seven boxes of ammunition, with 25 shells in each, per day at Fort Benning, Ga., where he is a private first class in the elite U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. The rest of his time is spent "training the trainers" -- sergeants and noncommissioned officers who absorb the expert marksmen's lessons and in turn teach soldiers how to shoot to kill.

Pfc. Hancock's lesson No. 1: Lock in your eyes on the front edge of the target and don't take your eyes off it until you see it explode.

His gun doesn't have a nickname, and he doesn't sleep with it or talk to it. It's not a pet, a friend or an extension of his body. "It's a tool," he said flatly, "something that allows me to do my job." He also doesn't mind at all that the underbelly of its stock is presently covered in stickers -- full of numbers and official seals that signify it is permitted to be in China, in the Olympics.

As he was led around from one room to the next after the medal ceremony Saturday, Hancock seemed not the least bit concerned that he was at this point separated from his gun, for going on an hour.

"I've got folks taking care of it," he said. "It's in good hands."