Ginny Thrasher, an American 19-year-old shooter, just edged China’s Du Li to take home America’s first gold at the Rio Olympics.
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-YOUTH SERVED: Thrasher topped her spectacular spring where she won three NCAA titles and a spot on the U.S. Olympic team by upsetting China’s Li Du, a two-time gold medalist, to capture the women’s 10-meter air rifle title.
Competing in her first Olympics, Thrasher, as the first champion of the 2016 Games, was awarded her medal by International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach and said the achievement was beyond her wildest dreams. She swapped figure skating for shooting after a family hunting trip in which she killed a deer with her first shot.
“I heard the cheers and the horns and it was very disturbing”, Yi said.
The American became the youngest Olympic champion in the women’s 10m air rifle women since 1992 when South Korea’s Yeo Kab-Soon won at the age of 18.
She didn’t flinch at the sport’s brightest spotlight – or an air horn.
China’s Yi Siling, who won the event in London four years ago, completed the podium as she snapped up the bronze.
Thrasher came in at No. 6 during the qualifying round.
Thrasher scored an Olympics finals record 208.0.
In the men’s 10m air pistol event, Hoang Xuan Vinh claimed Vietnam’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in any sport.
Despite the milestone, Solo was still peppered with jeers from the crowd, who were riled up about social media posts she made about the threat of the Zika virus.
She opened the elimination finals – a new format in this year’s Olympics – with a flawless 10.9 and was in the lead after Scherer became the first shooter knocked out. “I started to realize it was a real possibility about half way through but I pushed that quickly out of my mind”.
Elsewhere Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet won a crash-filled men’s cycling road race and rugby returned to the Games after a gap of 92 years.
Her current issue centers around new gun control measures in California that, among other things, added background checks for ammunition. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the best-recognized names on the U.S. Olympic team belong to women.
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Thrasher was sixth in the qualification round Saturday and shot a ideal 10.9 on her opening shot in the finals.
