“My career has been a rollercoaster of a ride but at the end of the day I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Rhode told ISSF as she looked back on her unique Olympic career and ahead to the future challenge of earning a place at the home Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Asked about the greatest challenges she has yet faced, she might have cited having the gun she had used in competition for 18 years stolen from her pick-up truck in September 2008. It was returned to her in January 2009 after being discovered in an unrelated search of a local parolee’s home.
She might have cited losing all her gear – including vests and specialised glasses and blinkers - shortly before an Olympics when they were stolen from a vehicle at her parents’ house. They were returned a fortnight later.
But she identified two other challenges.
The first was her enforced mid-career switch when the double trap, at which she had won two golds and a bronze, was dropped from the Olympic programme as from the Beijing 2008 Games and she needed to move back to her original event of the skeet.
The second related to health crises, involving her and her family, that emerged at critical moments in terms of her sporting ambitions.
Challenge One
“When double trap was eliminated from the Games I was forced to switch events,” Rhode recalled. “I didn’t really compete originally in international skeet, I competed in American skeet. I did shoot a little bit of international but then went to doubles.
“Switching from doubles one of my greatest challenges, because I went from being No.1 all the way down to the bottom and then working my way back up. Which is not always an easy pill to swallow!
“And obviously I had challenges on the team because some people who were a lot older than me felt I was taking something that was rightfully theirs.
“Going from doubles bunker which was what I was shooting, there were a few times through the years where I used my doubles gun for skeet shooting. But there were a lot of challenges going to a new skeet gun.
“Starting at your hip in international skeet was one of the more challenging aspects, because all the shooting I had ever done was up-gun. So it would be like a swimmer that did backstroke going to diving.
It was essentially the same thing in shooting. I had to adapt, to start over. We had to fit the gun and it’s like everything, you get blisters and burns, you rub your hands raw, you get your face raw, bruised shoulders, all that stuff. You do anything as many times as we do, then that’s really the challenge you face. Those are the things we have to get right.
“And even when you do you build up calluses, and strength in different muscles, international competition is a bit like holding weights in your hands and holding your arms out in front of you for long periods of time.
“So it was challenging, but I’m really glad that I did it because it taught me quite a lot about who I am and what I want to represent.”
Challenge Two
“When I was competing at the 2016 Olympics I had some medical conditions that made it very difficult for me to walk and to move around,” Rhode told ISSF.
“Before Rio I was diagnosed as having a tumour in my breast that they thought was cancer. So not only had I just made the Olympics, and just had the high of making the team, but then just days after be told I have to have emergency surgery.
“You go from one extreme to the other in just a matter of days, it really puts things into perspective about what is important.
“At the end of the day it was benign, non-cancerous, but in those weeks while you wait it’s…awful.
“But you get real calm, real methodical. Because I didn’t want people to know, because I didn’t want the sympathy…you just don’t want to change anything so I didn’t tell a lot of people.
“So going into Rio to compete, knowing that I wasn’t 100 per cent, against other people that were 100 per cent, was very challenging from a mental side. Because you know you are giving it your all but your all isn’t 100 per cent.
“I always say that winning a gold medal is easy because everything is going right for you usually when you are winning the gold.
“When you’re behind and you know it, the silver and the bronze are always more difficult because things aren’t going right and you are having to work twice as hard for those medals.
“Not to say you don’t work hard for the gold but usually things are going smoothly in those aspects.”
Speaking to USA Shooting after earning her Rio 2016 bronze – and sixth Olympic medal - after a shoot-off, Rhode said it was “at the top of the list”, adding: “I was very emotional out there on the medal podium. I think every emotion hits you at once. You want to run, scream, cry and you just don’t know which one to do first. It doesn’t matter if it’s the gold, the silver or the bronze, it’s the journey, and my journey this time was very, very challenging.”
Rhode narrowly missed qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Games. She told ISSF that her build-up that season had been affected by the fact that her then six -year-old son Carter, who was born in 2013, had been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
“I was dealing with this during the Olympic trials,” she said. “He had several CT scans, all of which showed he had a tumour. It was such a shock.
“When you walk into those hospitals during COVID with a child that you think is going to have to have pretty major surgery on their brain, it’s one of the most terrifying things that I think a parent can ever go through.
“Eventually he saw another specialist who said he had been misdiagnosed. He had fluid on the brain but he would be fine, he didn’t need to have any surgery. It was something he was born with and that he would die with – no biggie in the end.”
Reflecting on these two health scares, Rhode told ISSF: “It’s probably why I now do a lot more in terms of giving back to the sport and people because I recognise how important that is and how precious life is. I want to talk about this now because I think it’s important to show people that everyone has bumps in the road and it’s about how you overcome them.
“I feel very fortunate to be able to do what I love. I’ve had some pretty major bumps in the road. But I want to be defined by what I did on the field, and in the legacy of helping the sport and people, not on all the challenges I had, because there are people out there with much worse things than me that they are having to deal with.
“And I think it’s also important to say that’s really what the Olympics represent, which is overcoming obstacles.”