The 19-year-old American will leave Brazil an Olympic champion in the women’s 10m air rifle, after her nerves of steel and steady hands made her the first athlete in Rio to stand atop a podium.
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Speaking about her win at the Rio Olympics 2016, Thrasher said it was beyond her “wildest dreams”. Thrasher’s teammate, six-time Olympian Kim Rhode, spoke earlier this week about how new gun measures in her state of California had affected her training because she must complete extensive background checks to buy ammunition for practice. Listed below are the complete results of the 10m air rifle event.
“I’ve been retired for two years so when I returned I did not expect to do so well”, said Du.
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.
Three years ago, according to the Washington Post, she was the 45th-ranked junior shooter in the country and wasn’t a popular medal pick before the competition.
Van der Breggen’s victory, however, was shadowed by the crash of her team mate Annemiek van Vleuten, who flew over her handlebars with 11 kilometers to go in the race. The idea of yielding a gun and taking dead aim at a target almost 33 feet away was completely foreign.
Thrasher added that her average during qualification was slightly above a 10.4.
“I think I knew it was realistic for me to make finals, but I was not focused on that”, she said.
But by Thrasher’s last shot of 10.4, it was clear that not even perfection by Du would rob the American of the gold. The Mountaineers won the title handedly, but Thrasher stole the spotlight, sweeping the individual titles with wins in smallbore and air rifle to become only the second Mountaineer in the program’s history to earn both championships in one season.
The 2016 edition of the Olympics is an important worldwide multi-gaming event hosted by Rio de Janeiro; Brazil tagged “RIO 2016”.
Thrasher finished with a final score of 208, a full point ahead of Li. And Yi won the competition at the London Games when Thrasher was barely a freshman in high school, not yet old enough to drive.
Thrasher easily qualified for the finals, then on her first shot in the final, she recorded a flawless 10.9 and was on her way to winning the gold. “But it’s not what’s important”, she said. “That’s better than making the shot, to be honest with you. It’s just a great adrenaline rush to be able to have a shot that is so ideal and then have to come back and do it again and again for the rest of your life”.
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It was an intense match for Ms. Thrasher, Du and Yi for the Medal contention.
