A spinal injury ended Adriana Ruano’s Olympic dream as a gymnast. She came back as a shooter and won Guatemala’s first Olympic gold medal Wednesday.
Ruano was training for the 2011 world championships in gymnastics, a qualifier for the London Olympics the next year, when she felt pain in her back. An MRI showed that the then-16-year-old had six damaged vertebrae — a career-ending injury — and Ruano’s doctor recommended she take up shooting if she wanted to stay in sports without aggravating her injured back.
That advice paid off Wednesday as Ruano won gold in the women’s trap with an Olympic-record score of 45 out of 50.
Ruano closed her eyes and took a deep breath before hitting her 43rd target to make sure of the gold with five shots remaining. She missed her next two shots after that, but it didn’t matter.
Guatemala had never won a gold medal at the Olympics and had only one medal of any kind in its history until Tuesday, when Jean Pierre Brol won bronze in the men’s trap.
Italy’s Silvana Stanco won the silver with 40, and Australia’s Penny Smith took the bronze.
Tokyo champion Zuzana Rehak Stefecekova did not make the final, and world No. 1 Fatima Galvez came in fifth.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.