How does a country smaller than the size of Ohio, with a GDP 286 times smaller than the United States, perform better in Olympic shooting?
And how did a former gymnast, who performed in the Pan Am Games in 2010; then injured her back in 2011, volunteer for the Rio Games in 2016, then become a gold medalist in the Olympic trap and set an Olympic record in the process?
Introducing the shooting world to Adriana Ruano Oliva happened when she captured the gold medal in trap at the 2023 Pan Am Games. Her Olympic gold medal now takes the 29-year-old to a new level and has introduced her presence to the world.
It's mind-boggling that a country with only one shooting range in the whole country and a limited amount of money to spend on shooting sports took home two medals, one of them gold in Trap shooting, while the United States continues to search for its first medal of the games in shooting.
“I was able to see the pool competition, and I think that was the moment that inspired me to say okay maybe I’m not in gymnastics, I can do it here. Shooting,” Ruano Oliva said of when she got the shooting bug as a volunteer at the Rio Olympics.
If losing out on her gymnastic dream wasn’t enough, she lost the purpose, and, to some extent, her reason for being, following her injury.
When her doctor told her of the career-ending injury at 16 years old, Ruano Oliva knew she could not give up the rigid lifestyle of training and studying. She needed to find another outlet.
Her doctor, an avid shooter, recommended shooting to the gold medalist, and eventually, it became a match made in heaven, culminating in an Olympic record performance of 45 of 50 targets.
“I came with a system where I was like training for hours in the morning, then going to school, then going back to the second session, and when I get injury, I didn't have anything,” Ruano Oliva said. “So, I started to get desperate. I was I was frustrated also. So yes, I think the doors open for me. This is sports. And with my doctor, with my teammates, that opened the doors with the sports.”
But the perseverance of Ruano Oliva and the other Guatemalan shooters is the real story.
For almost the entire year of 2023, Guatemalan shooters were not supplied with ammunition to train. When they finally did get ammo, they were restricted to three boxes a day for three days a week. That's 225 shots a week to compete against the best shooters in the world.
In a recent interview with Shooting Sports USA, USA skeet shooter Dania Vizzi discussed the amount of practice she does.
“I shoot about ten boxes a day, so 250 shells a day. And if I’m not traveling too much, I’m shooting six days a week,” Vizzi said. “So, a conservative estimate would be 15,000 and 20,000 shells a year.”
Guatemala has only one range in the entire country, located in the capital, Guatemala City. When possible, shooters train in different locations - outside of Guatemala.
Ruano Oliva believes this provides the team with variety and allows them to shoot in all different conditions.
Before the Olympics, they spent approximately seven weeks in Peru, Spain, France, and Italy preparing for the games and getting much-needed exposure to all types of situations.
However, the most challenging situation may have been limited access to her coach.
According to Ruano Oliva, she started working with her coach from Spain in 2022, but in 2023, she could not access him except for 14 days before the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, near the end of 2023.
The reason was corruption at the highest levels. The money that was supposed to go to the athletes to train, provide equipment and ammunition, and pay for coaches, was gone.
On September 8, 2022, the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee suspended Guatemala from the Olympics after the Constitutional Court of Guatemala decided, in August 2022, to provisionally suspend several provisions of the National Olympic Committee (NOC’s) Statutes and Regulations, relating to the NOC election process, for reasons unclear to the IOC.
The IOC provisionally lifted the suspension on March 19, 2024, stating that it was for the benefit of Guatemalan athletes.
Because Guatemala was on suspension by the IOC when Ruano Oliva won her gold medal at the Pan Am Games, her national anthem, Himno Nacional de Guatemala, was not played, as she was not representing her country.
On Wednesday, she was the first Guatemalan athlete to be on the medal stand as her country's anthem was played at the Olympics.
The medal rush started for the Central American country when 41-year-old Jean Pierre Brol, the oldest shooter in the finals, won bronze. His was Guatemala's first medal since race walker Erick Barrondo's silver at the 2012 London Olympics.
"I’d like to dedicate this to my country, which is a country that needs good news right now," Brol said with the bronze metal hanging around his neck. “I’m willing to give the best of myself for my country. It’s good to give them good news and fills me with pride.”
Guatemala has a population of 17.36 million, many of whom live in poverty, while the U.S. has a population of approximately 340 million. Yet Guatemala has won its second and third medals in the Olympics, including its first gold. The U.S. is still grasping for straws in Chateauroux.
— Alex Miceli