Adriana Ruano Oliva created sporting - and national - history as she earned Guatemala’s first Olympic gold medal, and third Games medal of any hue, by winning the trap women event with an Olympic record of 45 out of 50.
The 29-year-old former gymnast’s triumph came just a day after her 41-year-old team-mate Jean Pierre Brol Cardenas had won Paris 2024 bronze in the trap men event, securing what was only his country’s second Olympic medal following Erick Barrondo's silver in the men’s 20km walk at London 2012.
Now Ruano - who dominated from start to finish in a final where silver went to Italy’s Silvana Stanco, who totalled 40, and bronze to Penny Smith of Australia – has elevated her country to the ultimate sporting pinnacle.
She stands there three years after finishing 26th in this event at the Tokyo 2020 Games - and eight years after her first close-up view of shooting at the Rio 2016 Games, where she served as a volunteer - switched her on to the sport.
Before competition Ruano says she likes to listen to the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song “Can’t Hold Us.”
The lyrics of that song include a reference to “chasing dreams since I was 14.” That will resonate strongly with someone whose sporting ambitions began as a gymnast and who took part in the Pan American Games as a teenager only to have to quit the sport the following year after suffering serious spinal injury.
Ruano turned to shooting – with results. Last year she won the Pan American Games trap title in Santiago as her team-mate Waleska Soto took silver, with both competing for the Independent Athletes Team because of the International Olympic Committee’s suspension of the Guatemala National Olympic Committee in August 2022 because of irregularities.
Thankfully the IOC’s provisional lifting of that ban on March 20 this year enabled Ruana’s and Cardenas’s successes to be celebrated in full style, with national flags waving and, in the case of the former, the national anthem playing. Ruano's mother wept tears of joy in the stands...
“I can’t even believe it’s for real,” said Ruano. “I’m so happy. I’m honoured to be here, and it wasn’t easy to get here again. I want to thank Guatemala, and also my father.”
Asked about what impact her victory will have on shooting in Guatemala, she responded: “I hope more people can do the same or more for the sport. We only have one (shooting) range, so I hope this will make the sport bigger and more people will try it.”
Speaking about the injury she suffered as a teenager, she added: "I came through a system where I was training in gymnastics for two hours in the morning, then was going to school and then going back for a second session in the afternoon.
“When I had my injury (in 2011), I didn't have anything. I started to get desperate, and I was frustrated. Then the door opened for me with this sport."
On the subject of being a volunteer at Rio 2016, she commented: "I said to myself, 'If I can't be there as an athlete, maybe I can be there as a volunteer', so I applied. They put me on shooting, and I was able to watch my teammates.
“I could see the competition, and that was the moment that inspired me to think, 'OK, maybe if not in gymnastics, I can do it in shooting'."
Ruano, who had finished third in the morning’s final qualification behind the Spanish pair of 22-year-old Mar Molne Magrina and world No.1 Fatima Galvez, took a grip on this event from the start that she never looked faintly likely to relinquish as temperatures at the Chateauroux Shooting Centre ranged up to the 40C mark.
She scored with her first 16 shots and moved steadily away from all opposition, securing gold with the first of her final five efforts which brought her total to 43, which equalled the Olympic record set at the Tokyo 2020 Games by Slovakia’s Zuzana Stefecekova, who had missed out on reaching the final after finishing 12th in qualification.
After missing the next two of her four remaining efforts, Ruano re-focused to shatter the last two clays and establish a new mark in her own right.
As the stands grew frenzied with Guatemala flags and the realisation of what she had achieved began to sink in, the tears arrived.
For Stanco, the 2023 World Cup Final champion, silver was a very acceptable step-up from the fifth place she had achieved in the Tokyo 2020 final three years earlier, and the same went too for Smith, sixth in Tokyo, who had earned the sixth and last place in the final after beating China's 2018 Asian Games champion Zhang Xinqiu and Portugal's Maria Coelho de Barros in a shoot-off after all had totalled 121.
maintained her composure to head off the lingering challenge of Molne Magrina, who won two World Cup titles last year and finished one place ahead of her senior colleague.
Galvez never recovered from a nightmare start which saw her miss four of her five opening efforts, and although she recovered sufficiently to avoid being the first athlete to make their exit – finishing one shot ahead of China’s Wu Cuicui, making her Olympic debut aged 36 – she could not survive another round.
Referring to her silver medal, Stanco commented: “It means a lot. After Tokyo, I was really disappointed. But I worked hard, and I really wanted this medal. I did everything right, and I am just very excited right now.”
She paid tribute to the work she had done in preparation with her mental skills coach Costanza Bonaccorsi.
“We worked a lot in the last few weeks coming up to the Olympic Games, because I was struggling a lot on the mental side. It made a huge, huge difference.”
Summing up a day that had seen her come through a shoot-off to earn her bronze medal, Smith commented: “It was absolutely phenomenal. For everyone back home, this is for them. We did it the hard way, but we got there in the end with the bronze medal.
“I was definitely disappointed in Tokyo, and I just wanted to make it bigger and better this time. I trained my guts out and did everything I possibly could, and I’m so pleased to come out with a medal.”