Different event, but Rhode still has a shot

BEIJING -- The most decorated member of the U.S. Olympic shooting team goes to work wearing faded blue jeans, a weathered gun vest, a white Nike baseball cap and protective glasses with a yellow tint.

And did we mention the string of pearls?

"The pearls are just really beautiful. Girlie, I guess," Kimberly Rhode said.

Annie Oakley, meet Christian Dior.

"In our sport, a lot of people think you have to be a big burly man," Rhode said. "And you don't. It all comes down to the mental, the hand-eye coordination. And being able to do it 1,000 times."

Which is how she has come to blast stereotypes and clay targets at the same time.

Rhode, a gregarious, soft-spoken, 29-year-old veterinary student, learned to shoot when she learned to walk, won her first Olympic title while in high school and spends much of her free time reading to grade-school kids, planning her wedding and collecting antiques.

"I love cars. I dance. I like to have my fingernails done and my hair done," she said. "You only live once and you've got to try to do it all."

What Rhode does best, though, is wield a shotgun, winning two golds and a bronze in the last three Olympics and setting so many world records she has lost count.

"It's a lot," she said. "It's up there in the 20s or 30s. Maybe more."

But Thursday in Beijing, Rhode, who was born in Whittier and grew up in El Monte, faces the biggest challenge of her career. After watching her dominate the women's double trap competition over the last 12 years, the International Shooting Sports Federation and the International Olympic Committee removed the event from the Beijing Games. So Rhode is moving to international skeet.

"It's like a diver going to swimming," said Richard Rhode, her father and coach. "It's totally different."

Yet Rhode has already begun the transition, winning a World Cup title and setting a world record last year in her first major international skeet competition.

"It changes everything, from your gun to your mechanics," said Rhode, who won her first major shooting title when she was 13.

In double trap, competitors start with their guns mounted, shooting from five stations at targets moving straight away from them. In skeet, competitors begin with their guns at their hip, must negotiate eight stations and shoot at targets flying horizontally, on a random delay, from different sides.