The first gold medal at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has gone to an American teenager.
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The first gold medal in the Rio 2016 Olympics was won by American Virginia Thrasher, a 19-year-old West Virginia college student, in the 10 meter air rifle event, according to media reports on Saturday.
Thrasher’s cumulative score of 208.0 to beat Du by just one point.
The 19-year-old US college champion edged out China’s Du Li, gold in Athens in 2004, with an Olympic-record score of 208 in the sport’s new finals format.
In swimming, Mack Horton clinched Australia’s first gold of the Rio Olympics on Saturday by upsetting favored defending champion Sun Yang of China in the men’s 400-meter freestyle final.
Virginia Thrasher won gold medal, the first gold medal for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
She is now studying engineering at West Virginia University.
The 21-year-old smashed his own World Record in the pool to claim his first Olympic Gold and the first Gold from a Team GB boy in the pool in 28 years. So congrats to Thrasher, a teenager who’s been dominant on the American rifle scene and has now made her mark on the worldwide stage.
Thrasher says all she could do was to stay focused and it means a lot that she defeated the veterans in such an intense competition, “I was just thinking just shoot a ten”. The top eight scores went to the finals. “I also looked up and saw that Virginia and Du Li were doing well themselves”.
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Thrasher ended up on top of the podium and her whirlwind will wind down soon; a biomedical engineering major, she starts classes again at West Virginia on August 17. She fell out of the lead before regaining it midway through the competition, and eventually held off a two-pronged Chinese charge from Athens champion Du, 34, and London victor Yi, 27.
