Ginny Thrasher, 19, the NCAA women’s air rifle champion, won the first gold medal of the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics for the United States in the women’s 10-meter air rifle.
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“I just had a plan today to do the best I could and I’m happy with my result”.
Thrasher had a quick rise to the top.
Thrasher grew up as a figure skater but switched to competitive shooting five years ago after a family hunting trip.
Thrasher is from Springfield, Virginia and is now a student at West Virginia University.
Earlier this year, Thrasher became the first freshman to win both individual NCAA rifle titles and helped West Virginia win the team title.
“I didn’t really care much about the Olympics”, Thrasher told The Post last month, after she qualified for the usa team.
Coached by the former British Olympian Jon Hammond, Thrasher has virtually come from nowhere to sit at the pinnacle of her sport.
Scherer fared better than Thrasher in the 40-shot qualifying, scoring a 416.8 to finish fifth. She also became just the 11th USA player all time – across all positions – to reach that number of appearances. Daria Vdovina from Russian Federation hit straight good shots to climb to the top after 10 shots, but the 9.2 in the 13th shot pulled her down to end up the match at the fifth place.
Thrasher stood her ground against the two Chinese shooters in the medal eliminations, hitting nothing lower than 10.4.
Brazilians will have to wait a bit longer for their country to earn its first gold medal at their home Olympics after reigning judo champion Sarah Menezes suffered a shock defeat in the quarter-finals on Saturday.
“Halfway through when I took the lead it was clear to me I had a chance, I was taking one shot at a time”.
China’s Yi Siling took the bronze. Between them, they have 3 air rifle gold medals.
A couple of years later she found herself enrolled in Springfield West High School.
So how exactly did Thrasher come to be one of the world’s best air rifle shooters?
In the final round, Thrasher never scored lower than 10.4 on a shot. Not even when it was just down to her and two former Olympic gold medallists beside her – Yi and Du, the 2004 victor who shot an Olympic record in the qualification round earlier. We just had six laws that were passed in California that will directly affect me. “I also looked up and saw that Virginia and Du Li were doing well themselves”. She went through gun-safety training, learned to shoot from her father, who’s retired from the Air Force, and when Thrasher bagged her first whitetail deer, she was hooked.
With questions cut off after 15 minutes, she held up her medal for some camera-phone photo ops and whisked out a back door.
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USA Today reported that Thrasher expressed concern that her sport had been tarnished by the United States debate over gun controls.
