1st Gold to 'Murikan Gun Culture!

1st Gold to a 19-year-old air rifle marksman, and she's a girl!

She beat the Athens Gold medalist from China and China also took the bronze. Not bad for a 19-year-old to show that kind of poise.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Unflappable American teenager Virginia Thrasher won the first gold medal of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Saturday, holding her nerve against two Chinese Olympic champions to clinch the women's 10m air rifle event.

The 19-year-old U.S. 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. Defending Olympic champion Yi Siling, also of China, took the bronze medal.

She got her start hunting deer with her grandfather and is a West Virginia Mountaineer. She became the national collegiate champion as a freshman.

Thrasher learned to love shooting while hunting deer with her grandfather when she was in eighth grade.

"I got my first deer and I liked the adrenaline of pulling the trigger," she said.

She then joined her high school air rifle team and was recruited by West Virginia University, where she became a national collegiate champion as a freshman this year.

She also handled the inevitable gun control question with poise.

Here I found some video:

Well, if the gun grabbers got their way this wouldn't even be a sport because nobody would be able to practice. Unless of course they were officially sponsored by the government and preferably only with laser site weapons (just lasers, nor rounds of any kind).

Seriously, good job to the kid!

Despite what the American main stream control freaks would have us all believe, shooting is considered a real sport.

Good for her.

Those air rifle setups are expensive as hell. I was looking into one of these rigs when I fancied the idea of competitive shooting.

That girl is like $4K into her rifle.

a reply to: projectvxn


Maybe they should hand them an off the shelf daisy bb gun to shoot.

Way to go!

Well done America.

Gold is always good.

And shooting is a sport you should dominate.

Well done to her.

a reply to: ketsuko

And it all started here

I go Prado Shooting range often and see 99% Chinese immigrants at the 10 metter so they start them young here also.

An even greater and rare achievement from this young lady!

I won't make a new thread for this, but the men's gymnastics are off to a rough start.

There is video out there, and I'm not going to link it because it's brutal, of the injury. But a French vaulter basically suffered a catastrophic fracture of the kind you are more likely to see in a football game after his vault. Basically, he fell to the ground with half his calf flopping around loosely below his knee. He was carried off the floor.

There is also a German gymnast who has blown out his knee. He injured himself on the floor routine and had to be carried off, but he then did his pommel horse and stuck the dismount on one leg.