By TGM Staff
Ginny Thrasher
On Aug. 6, in her first Olympic competition, Ginny Thrasher won the first gold medal awarded to anyone or any country in the 2016 Rio Olympics, in the 10m air rifle competition.
Thrasher, a 19-year-old college student at West Virginia University, won a huge upset victory over the heavily-favored defending Olympic champion Chinese shooters. Nobody predicted that she’d medal in Rio, and her win was the first victory in air rifle for the US since 2000.
By the time the Rio shooting events concluded on Aug. 14, it was the women shooters who harvested all the shooting medals and the glory. The US Olympic Shooting Team was leaving Rio de Janeiro with Thrasher’s gold in air rifle, a repeat bronze for Corey Cogdell-Unrein in Women’s Trap and a most-historic bronze for Kim Rhode in Women’s Skeet.
What is especially significant in Rhode’s performance was that she has now medaled in six consecutive Olympic Games, starting with her gold medal performance in Atlanta at 16—even younger than Thrasher this year.
None of the other members of the US shooting team ended up in final events even though they turned in very good performances in qualifying competitions. The problem is that other nations’ shooters are getting better.
Corey Cogdell-Unrein
As USA Shooting.com summed it up, “These Games proved once again that the rest of the world is really good at shooting too. China and Italy led the overall medal totals with seven apiece, while Italy did so with flair in earning a Games-high four gold. Germany showcased its strength in winning three gold medals and four overall too. All told, 19 countries, including two from IOC-sanctioned Kuwait which was competing under the IOA flag, earned medals in shooting. That total was the highest amount of countries earning a medal in any one sport besides judo as of the afternoon of Aug. 14. Swimming and taekwondo each had 18 countries earn medals.”
Thrasher’s first event performance didn’t escape notice of the anti-gun crowd.
Naturally, Piers Morgan—former lead gun prohibitionist for CNN, had to try to take away from her incredible victory by making fun of the sport she played, tweeting that it was the “least surprising breaking news ever” that an American athlete had been victorious in a shooting sport.
To USA Shooting’s credit, their reply to Morgan was far kinder than his dismissive tweet deserved. They reminded Morgan that the weapon Thrasher used in the event was a pellet gun, she was not the favorite to win by a long shot (pun very intended), and that there are athletes competing in shooting sports from his home nation as well.
But Morgan wasn’t the only civilian disarmament grouch to mock Thrasher’s first gold success. Anti-gun vitriol dripped all over the social media.
Kim Rhode
Thrasher’s unbelievable performance, which included a 10.9 in the qualifying round, also named her the youngest female to ever win the first gold medal and set a new Olympic record with a finals score of 208.0 – finishing an unprecedented full point above Du Li of China, gold medal winner back in 2004 and in 2008 for 50-meter Three Position Air Rifle.
In a post-competition interview with NBC, Thrasher said, “About halfway through the final I knew I was in contention for a medal and that was a great feeling obviously . . . But I had to go and push that thought away and come back and focus on shooting.”;
She went on to say, “I’m just very proud to start off the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in such a positive manner for my country.”
Making history on an Olympic-sized scale, Thrasher, at only 19 years old, also marked a notable moment in the story of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) as she not only became the first CMP Junior Air Rifle Camp alum to ever make it to the Olympic team, but also the first medal winner.
A familiar face to the CMP, she received eighth place during the 60 Shot National Air Rifle Match at the 2013 National Matches at Camp Perry, along with first place in the Junior match and fourth overall in the Open category during the 2015 Camp Perry Open event. In 2014, she received Junior Distinguished Badge #771 and was awarded a CMP Scholarship for her accomplishments the following year.
