Ginny Thrasher wins first gold medal of Olympics for team USA
By Joe Tacosik
Just hours into the first day of the 2016 Summer Olympics, 19-year-old Ginny Thrasher has claimed the first gold medal for the United States.
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The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero officially got underway after Friday night’s Opening Ceremony and it was 19-year-old American Ginny Thrasher who claimed the first gold medal.
GOLDEN GINNY! #TeamUSA's first medal. #TeamUSA's first #Gold! pic.twitter.com/Ew62Pl9svB
— USA Shooting (@USAShooting) August 6, 2016
American Ginny Thrasher wins the first gold medal of the Olympics in women's 10m air rifle. Upset, neither AP nor SI picked her to medal.
— Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) August 6, 2016
Thrasher officially upset silver medalist Du Li and bronze medalist Yi Siling, both of China, in the women’s 10-meter air rifle event on Saturday morning, to claim her first ever Olympic medal, and USA’s first gold medal of the Olympic games.
An NCAA champion shooter from West Virginia, Thrasher is competing in her first ever Olympic games as the youngest of the USA’s 15-member Olympic rifle team. In a pre-Olympic feature with the Washington Post, Thrasher told reporter Joon Lee that she first picked up a gun just five years ago, going whitetail deer hunting with her grandfather in Pennsylvania.
This past March, Thrasher became just the second member of West Virginia’s rifle program to win both individual small-bore and air rifle championships, earning herself a spot at the U.S. Olympic trials in Fort Benning, Ga.
“I knew shooting was an Olympic sport, but I never really thought, ‘Oh, I want to go to the Olympics in shooting,” Thrasher told the Washington Post. “I was just shooting because I loved shooting.”
Fellow American shooter Sarah Scherer finished eighth.