Meet Team USA's Frank Thompson
If 30 is the new 20, then competitive skeet shooter Frank Thompson has a long career ahead of him.
Frank was born in the “Cornhusker” state of Nebraska in 1988, and he was nine when he began shooting with his dad. When Frank’s passion for shotgun shooting began, Frank was particularly attracted to sporting clays.
While still a teenager, Frank was medaling in the junior ranks of national skeet championships, including back-to-back golds in the National Junior Olympics in 2007 and 2008. Golds, silvers, and bronzes continued to come his way throughout the years. And in 2012 and 2016 he competed at the Summer Olympics in London and Rio.
As with top competitive shooters worldwide, Frank, a member of Team USA, has depended upon the reliability of Winchester Ammunition for thousands upon thousands of targets turned to dust in competition, as well as many times more than that through a lifetime of practice to hone the skill needed to bring home the gold. And Winchester is pleased to have given him support throughout his career and looks forward to much more to come.
While shooting around the world, Frank successfully earned a degree in Business from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Shooting may be Frank’s primary sport, but not his only. In high school he played tennis and wrestled, and the sporting gene runs deep in his family. His second cousin, Patricia (“Patty”) Durkin was a champion wheelchair track Paralympian, competing, and medaling, in the Summer Paralympics in the 1980s and ’90s.
Since the mid-1960s, skeet shooters have had Winchester AA loads to count on. Pioneering the way with compression-formed plastic hulls, high-antimony hard shot, and plastic shotcups to protect against flat spots on pellets and reduce the number of “flyers,” AAs have long been the most popular shells on skeet and trap fields around the globe.
A competitive future for Frank Thompson and his shotgun, allied with Winchester and its ammunition, looks to stretch far ahead of him. But all work and no play, as the saying goes, means that Frank will still find time to enjoy hunting, fishing, motor sports, and, well, some more work, too, on the family ranch in Nebraska. When you are doing what you love, though, whether with a shotgun or on a horse, are you really “working”?
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