Teen Shooter Ginny Thrasher Wins USA's First Gold Medal Of Rio Olympics

[Ryan Ruck]

Teen Shooter Ginny Thrasher Wins USA's First Gold Medal Of Rio Olympics

August 6, 2016



American shooter Ginny Thrasher won the first gold medal of the Rio Olympics, pulling off an upset in the women's 10-meter air rifle event Saturday morning.

Thrasher, 19, beat silver medalist Du Li of China in the final round with a total of 208.0, setting an Olympic record in the finals. Du finished with 207.0.

Yi Siling of China took bronze as the first medals in Rio were awarded.

Thrasher wasn't one of the favorites to win a medal coming into the Olympics.

"I think I knew it was realistic for me to make finals, but I was not focused on that," she said. "I was focusing on just shooting the best that I could, and that got me there."

She is an NCAA champion at West Virginia competing in her first Olympics. The American was up against a deep field that included Du, who won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and Andrea Arsovic of Serbia, who is ranked No. 1 in the world and failed to advance to the final. Yi won Olympic gold in the 2012 London Games.

American Sarah Scherer was eighth.

The gold is the third won by the United States in women's air rifle, the first since Nancy Napolski-Johnson won in 2000.

Thrasher, who was on her high school rifle team, will also compete in the three-position event Aug. 11. Coming into the Olympics, her best finish at a World Cup was fourth in Munich this year.

She'll go back to West Virginia, where she will be a sophomore. "I get home 20 hours before the first class. So I’ll be in physics at 8:30 a.m."

[Ryan Ruck]

Just in case anyone was wondering how the scoring is determined, like I was, someone on ARFCOM helpfully posted a quick run down.

I dug out some old targets to give a bit of scale, and help explain how close this match was.

Gold shot a 208.0, silver a 207.0. 20 shots, max of 10.9/ea. That means gold shot an average of 10.4, and silver an average of 10.35.

This is a 9. You can see the 10-ring / dot:



This is a low 10, because it touches the 10-ring. Probably about a 10.0 or 10.1.



This is a high 10 - maybe a 10.7 or so.



The difference between gold and silver was 0.05 of a point. They're so good, that whole numbers can't even express it.

Yes, that dot is the actual bullseye!

So we're talking about an amazing level of skill in accuracy.

[American Patriot]

Damned good shooting....