Frank Thompson held off a field of challengers to qualify to compete at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in men’s skeet shooting Friday at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Shotgun in Tillar, Arkansas.
Thompson joins two-time Olympic champion Vincent Hancock as the second member of the U.S. men’s skeet team in Rio. He will attempt to improve on his eighth-place finish at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The bronze medalist at the 2014 Championship of the Americas, Thompson won silver at the same event in Rio in 2010. He placed ninth at the Rio world cup event earlier this year.
A member of the resident athlete program at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, since 2006, Thompson’s second cousin, Patty Durkin, won two golds and a bronze in track and field at the Barcelona 1992 Paralympic Games.
Thompson joins an impressive array of shooters who comprise the U.S. Olympic shotgun team for Rio. They include Hancock; Morgan Craft and five-time Olympian Kim Rhode in women’s skeet; and double trap shooters Glenn Eller and Josh Richmond. One other team member will be named in women’s trap before competition closes in Tillar on May 25.
