Sports

Couple living Olympic dream together

• Leesburg native Rebekah Hancock is in Beijing cheering on her husband in her former sport, competitive shooting.

Scott Chancey

BEIJING — Rebekah Hancock had Olympic dreams as recent as last year.

She still may achieve them, but only through her husband of less than three months, Vincent Hancock of Eatonton, who is a gold-medal favorite at this year’s Summer Games in Men’s Skeet Shooting.

Hancock, whose maiden name is Rebekah Young, was named to the National Junior Olympic Shotgun team in 2007 in trap shooting.

But today and Saturday, she will be on the sidelines as her husband chases Olympic glory.

“It’s really nice,” Rebekah said of China Thursday morning as it approached 9 p.m. where she was. “It is just

a crazy

experience.”

She met Vincent while the two competed in a Fort Benning shooting match. Vincent, who is a private first class in Fort Benning’s Army Markmanship Unit, finished first in the Olympic Trials. At the age of 16, Vincent won his first World Championship crown in men’s skeet and went on to win the prestigious International Shooting Sport Federation’s Shooter of the Year award.

Vincent, however, said his wife is just as valuable as any skill he has at competitions.

“She was the backbone,” Vincent said of Rebekah, who he married May 31. “She was there helping me get over the struggle on the first day (of Olympic Trials) because my nerves were high.”

The couple have not even had a honeymoon.

“Five days after our wedding, I went to Germany for World Cup and got the gold medal,” Vincent said. “I was able to bring her something home.”

Although Rebekah does not compete anymore and is studying to be a nurse in Columbus, she showed potential for a world-class shooter at an early age. She even killed a deer on her first hunting trip.

“It was a serious rush,” she told The Herald in 2007.

She didn’t stay interested in hunting much longer, considering the patience a hunter needs (“She doesn’t sit still very well for very long,” her mother, Cecilia, joked to The Herald in 2007).

Rebekah, who once gave equestrian sports a try, honed her skills at Flint Skeet and Trap and began training with — coincidentally at the time — Fort Benning’s Army Markmanship Unit and three-time Olympian Bret Erickson in Texas.

Vincent, who still occasionally goes shooting with his wife, feels she will be an important presence in Beijing.

“It’s great to have somebody here that I know, someone that I can lean on,” Vincent said. “If I need to argue with somebody, I can argue with her. It’s knowing that I have her there with me every step of the way.”