The national anthem of the United States plays as Corey Cogdell-Unrein and Jake Wallace (top step) and Kayle Browning-Thomas and Will Hinton (right) look on at the ISSF World Cup Shotgun on July 18, 2018 in Tucson, Ariz.
Team USA earned its second gold medal of the final ISSF World Cup of the season when two-time Olympic medalist Corey Cogdell-Unrein and Jake Wallace won gold Wednesday in trap mixed team in Tucson, Arizona.
They weren’t the only American duo to medal, either, setting the tone for what should be an exciting world championship in two months.
Kayle Browning-Thomas and Will Hinton took the bronze in a tight competition that saw Cogdell-Unrein and Wallace, who qualified in second place, overtake top qualifiers Melanie Couzy and Sebastien Guerrero of France in the final.
Cogdell-Unrein and Wallace scored 43 points to beat the French duo by one. Browning-Thomas and Hinton scored 32 points.
Trap mixed team, which has teams of one man and one woman alternate in shooting five targets each, will make its Olympic debut in 2020. Browning-Thomas and Hinton earlier this month won the first-ever Trap Mixed Team Tryout at Fort Carson, Colorado, beating out 32 other teams despite having never even trained nor competed together prior to the tryouts. Cogdell-Unrein, a three-time Olympian who won bronze in trap in both 2008 and 2016, and Wallace finished second. Both will represent the U.S. at the world championship in September in Changwon, South Korea.
The U.S. finished the meet with two gold, one silver and one bronze medal. The gold and silver earned prior also came in the same event – women’s skeet – and were earned by six-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode and Caitlin O’Connor.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
