Guatemalan Shooter! (wins bronze - now a gold!!)

Professor, just a suggestion here, but it might do well to qualify your thread title with some parenthetical reference to the Olympics. For a second there, I was expecting to see a story about some active shooter, either in Guatemala or of Guatemalan origin 🙂
 
donbosco said:
Well, I was kind of trying to have some fun...am I off in my sense of things here?
Click to expand...
You're good; I just saw "Guatemalan Shooter!" as a thread title and my first instinct was to think of a mass shooting. I forget sometimes that the Olympics are going on right now as well.
 
Guatemalan friend just texted me the news - for a nation that has had nigh onto zero sports success internationally to win two medals is gigantic in-country.
 
Last edited:
don in the house...

That's a huge achievement for Guatemala. They put a ton of money into their sports apparatus into all sorts of secondary sports with very little to show for it (a lot of that money gets slushed off to other hands).
 
CRHeel94 said:
don in the house...

That's a huge achievement for Guatemala. They put a ton of money into their sports apparatus into all sorts of secondary sports with very little to show for it (a lot of that money gets slushed off to other hands).
Click to expand...


Your telling me about the slush - the father of the buddy who texted me was part of the “Sports and Culture” ministry years back - he was telling me about the so-called funding and how it works these days.
 
donbosco said:
Click to expand...

Gymnast to shooting is quite the transition. Guess when you're an athlete at such an elite level, some of the skills that got you there might translate over to other things. Luka Doncic is apparently one of the best players in the world at a video game called Overwatch and oh yeah, he's a decent basketball player. Hand eye coordination and all that at elite levels.
 
There you go. Guatemala’s first Gold Medal. Adriana Ruano originally trained as a gymnast but injuries put her out of the sport. She took up another and just not only captured the Gold but also set an Olympic record in the process. She’s a Skeet Shooter.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3984.jpeg
    IMG_3984.jpeg
    1.5 MB · Views: 0
The irony is hardly lost on Guatemalans that these two medals have come by way of SHOOTING…this in a nation still feeling the effects of a 36 year-long Civil War.

The country bristles with guns and police, army, and private security forces are ubiquitous — all very heavily armed. The militarization of society that went on continues with the next generation.

So many, the vast majority, of the Guatemalans in the U.S. are there to escape the violence of militarization that, combined with the economic dislocation of the war, the historic wildly unequal distribution of wealth and property that reaches back to the Spanish colonization, severe crippling climate change, and the promise that relocating in El Norte brings for them and their children to survive and perhaps thrive.

But today they are both proud and smiling wryly over this win on the international stage.
 
Last edited:
donbosco said:
There you go. Guatemala’s first Gold Medal. Adriana Ruano originally trained as a gymnast but injuries put her out of the sport. She took up another and just not only captured the Gold but also set an Olympic record in the process. She’s a Skeet Shooter.
Click to expand...


The first 15 pages of today’s newspaper “Nuestro Diario” are dedicated to this feat!

It is like an unexpected run to the Final Four and winning it all!!!
 
Pretty amazing story...and yes very ironic that Guate's first medals come in this sport.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top