“It was just a big rush of adrenaline,” said Thrasher. “Things were happening very fast and all of a sudden, my aim was good and it was an exciting feeling.” This was Thrasher speaking 5 years ago. It was 4 am in the morning and the ninth-grader stood in the woods with a smoking gun. Yards ahead of her lay a dead whitetail deer. The 14-year-old had fired her first gun and felled an animal.
Until today, all the news centered on 19-year-old teen Virginia Thrasher underscored her brilliant form that booked her a seat to Rio. ‘From NCAA Champion to Olympian, it's been quite a 2016 already’ were a few of the headlines the American was making.
Today, the world was taken aback as Thrasher won the first gold medal of the Rio 2016 games. The 19-year old finished the event with a tally of 208.0 points after the 20 shots in the final round of the 10m air rifle event. Virginia Thrasher, well, thrashed her final competitor Du Li of China by a whole point, a wide margin in a tight match. Du Li was the clear favorite to bag the gold this Rio after her gold medal-winning performances in the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics.
Thrasher always dreamt of being an Olympian – but as a figure skater. It wasn’t until 9th grade that she realized that she couldn’t skate her way to a gold medal. That’s when her grandfather introduced her to shooting.
It wasn’t long before Thrasher was shooting precociously, overtaking the far more experienced.
“What she achieved as a freshman in college is as good as anyone in the last 10 years or more,” West Virginia rifle Coach Jon Hammond said. “The things she’s achieved just this year, it’s not very often that someone achieves that. Usually, it’s someone who has international experience and has been shooting for a long time. Not a college freshman.”
The freshman won national titles in both small-bore and air rifle during the NCAA championships in March. In April, she was named in the U.S. team headed to Rio.
The youngest of three with two older brothers, Virginia Thrasher wouldn’t have imagined winning the first gold at Rio a year ago. Her perseverance and dedication have shone through and made these Olympics special from Day 1. Even more exciting is the fact that she will be able to participate for at least the next three Olympics barring a drop in form or motivation, so we have a potential legend in the making.
