Teenage American Ginny Trasher made waves early on when she won the first gold medal in Rio Olympics on Saturday in the Women’s 10M Air Rifle event.
Ginny is a Sophomore engineering student at West Virginia University who led the Mountaineers to their 18th NCAA team rifle championship as well as 4th straight title.
Ginny has momentarily celebrated in interviews having that bubbly personality as she knows she needs to refocus for her next event on Thursday August 11.
“I have to go refocus for my next match, After I shoot that match, I’ll be going back, straight to classes for my sophomore year,”. She notes that classes start immediately — “They start the day after I get back.”
Thrasher beat out China’s Du Li, the 2006 World Champion had to settle for silver. China’s Yi Siling brought home the bronze for her country.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BI0_x6zAyud/?taken-by=ginnythrasher_
Air Rifle requires extreme precision repeated over and over again. Trasher who averaged 10.4 during qualification describes it as —
“It’s a sport of precision. Picture a pencil, and if you take the eraser of that pencil, that’s the very middle of the circle. And then if you took a period in size 12 Times New Roman font, and you put it in the middle of that pencil eraser, that is the 10. So, I have to hit that dot at 10 meters to shoot a 10. Now that’s just a 10.0, if I hit that dot it’s just a 10.0, and then if I hit in the very exact center it’s a 10.9”
COMING UP ON @GMA: American Ginny Thrasher wins first gold medal of #Rio Games: https://t.co/8SC0lFTJR2 pic.twitter.com/tkCTAcNkKE
— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 7, 2016
“I mean it’s not an Olympic sport for nothing!” saying it with her usually bubbly self.
Ginny Trasher has been training for five years, what seemed to be a short time to become an Olympic gold medalist. However, shooting comes natural to her and probably because it is a family thing with her father in the Air Force and grandpa loves deer hunting. Ginny was introduced to shooting when her grandpa took her to one of his deer hunting trips which led to joining the high school air rifle team.
.@USAShooting's Ginny Thrasher wins the first #Gold medal of #RioOlympics2016. https://t.co/YP3jF32tjV pic.twitter.com/VxLC0nhcBx
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2016
Ginny loves everything about the sport of shooting from practicing, competitions and everything else about it — “For me, I think that the best part about shooting is you get out of it what you put into it and I’ve had a great five years, I absolutely fell in love with the sport of shooting, and I love practicing, I love competing, I love everything about it.”
Given that this was her first Olympics she didn’t created the buzz and expectations of winning the first Gold Medal in Rio Olympics and for Team USA however, what happened, happened and she was proud of the outcome —
“Knowing that I had the first gold medal in the entire Rio 2016 Olympics, that was the moment when I thought I am so proud, I am so proud of being American, I am so proud to stand on that podium, to listen to my nation’s anthem and to just be able to represent, and start off this Rio 2016 games on such a positive note.”
On her plans on future Olympic games she notes — “I have three more years of NCAA eligibility, and then I’ll be shooting the next year after that aiming for Tokyo.”
The gold won by Ginny the United States’ third Gold Medal in women’s air rifle, the last time they won it was 16 years back by Nancy Napolski-Johnson in 2000.
