Vietnamese rejoice at first Olympic gold

Vietnamese rejoiced Sunday after their country won its first ever Olympic gold medal, a victory made all the more sweeter by the fact that regional rival China was beaten along the way.

Hoang Xuan Vinh, a 41-year-old a serving army colonel who first learned to shoot with AK47 rifles, made history in Rio overnight when a near-perfect final shot in the men’s 10-meter air pistol clinched him gold.

Vietnamese state media reported that Vinh would receive $100,000 from the state on his return — a handsome sum in a country where the average annual income is around $2,100.

Vinh’s victory shunted Brazil’s Felipe Almeida Wu and China’s Pang Wei into second and third respectively, something that was seized on by jubilant Vietnamese.

“So proud! But the greatest happiness was that we won over China,” Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, a Vietnamese music show host based in the US but popular in her homeland, wrote on Facebook./rga

source: sports.inquirer.net

Thrasher claims first Rio gold for USA in shooting

American teenager Virginia Thrasher claimed the first Rio Olympics gold medal in the shooting on Saturday.

The 19-year-old won the women’s 10m air rifle title at the Deodoro shooting venue, holding her nerve to see off China’s Du Li on the final shot.

She finished with 208 points, one clear of 2004 Athens champion Du as Olympic chief Thomas Bach looked on in the crowd.

The bronze medal went to China’s defending champion Yi Siling.

source: sports.inquirer.net