Adriana Ruano Oliva’s debut at the ISSF World Cup Final in New Delhi wasn’t the best; she placed tenth out of eleven competitors in the Women’s Trap with a score of 108/125. However, her heartbreak at the World Cup final will likely be merely a footnote in what has been a career-defining season.
The 29-year-old won the women’s trap event at the Olympic shooting competition in Chateauroux just two months ago, setting an Olympic record of 45 in the final after setting a personal best of 122 in qualification.
Adriana still finds it hard to believe what she has done.
I’m still content, though. She tells Sportstar, “You know, this has had a big impact on my life, like reaching my dream of almost 25 years.”
Even though she had dreamed of winning an Olympic medal since she was four years old, she never imagined that she would be a shooter.
It was only fate that I entered the sport at all. No one in my family was a shooter, and I had nothing to do with it. Actually, I wanted to be a gymnast at the Olympics,” she says.
Until recently, shooting as a sport was virtually unknown in Guatemala. Only after experiencing the agony of realizing she could no longer compete in gymnastics, her first love, did Adriana discover the sport.
She chuckles, “Gymnastics is definitely more popular than shooting, but it’s not as popular as football, of course.” At the age of four, Adriana rose to prominence as one of her nation’s most promising young women. Even if we weren’t as good as the USA, we still had aspirations. I wanted to go to the Olympics. Five females, including me, were supposed to strive for London 2012 Olympic qualification, she remembers.
Adriana represented her nation in a number of international competitions, including the 2010 Pan American Championships, where she competed alongside Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney, and the 2011 Pan American Games qualifying tournament.
However, she got the news that every athlete fears just when she was hoping to improve her chances of qualifying for the 2012 London Games. I was informed that I had suffered an irreversible injury to my spine. My joints had sustained a great deal of impact injury from all the jumping I had done. My coaches didn’t assign us a lot of physical treatment at the time. I had stiff muscles all the time. I couldn’t compete anymore because I wasn’t receiving enough blood to my spine,” she explains.
Olympic gold after silver-show in ISSF Shooting World Cup on Sonam Maskar sets her sights
The decision was made following a year of therapy that showed little progress. My doctor ultimately declared that I would never be able to train or compete as a gymnast again. I began gymnastics when I was four years old, and I was told I couldn’t continue when I was seventeen,” she remembers.
Her doctor advised her to try another sport as she dealt with her disappointment. A shotgun shooter friend of her brother suggested she try it. She didn’t have a natural aptitude for it.
“Although I didn’t enjoy it at first, I eventually grew to love and be passionate about the sport. I needed some time to get used to it. I’ve always been a gymnast, but shooting is very different.
In contrast to shooting, which requires extremely small, precise movements, gymnastics requires tremendously explosive motions. Shooting, of course, happens outside, but gymnastics is practiced indoors,” she says.
Adriana initially had no intention of pursuing a profession in shooting. “I
viewed it as a form of psychological treatment. I wanted to do something totally different because I was devastated to learn that I would never be able to compete as a gymnast again. “For me, shooting was just a diversion,” she explains.
She quickly began participating in domestic tournaments, though, and was shocked to find that she was winning.
Adriana participated in her first international tournament, the Continental Championships in Guadalajara, in 2014, three years after she gave up gymnastics and only a year after she picked up a shotgun. Despite her terrible debut score of 52/125, it simply made her want to compete more.
Her objectives were simple at the time: to qualify for the national team and play in the occasional World Cup. But it was an event she wasn’t even taking part in that gave her the genuine motivation to take the sport seriously.
“When I volunteered for the Rio Olympic Games in 2016, I had the idea that I would be able to compete in shooting at the Olympics. Shotgun shooting was something I had been practicing for.
By that time, I had been shooting shotguns for over three years, so I was able to volunteer at the Rio shooting range. Like all the other volunteers, I wore a yellow jersey, but I was still able to watch every competition and even get a picture with the then-champion of the Olympics. Seeing two of my teammates, Enrique Brol and Hebert Brol, perform in Rio was possibly the highlight of the trip. That gave me a lot of motivation.
When she won silver at the 2018 Pan American Championships, where she scored 111/125 in the same range as she had made just 52/125 four years prior in Guadalajara, she partially realized that desire by qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Even though Adriana only placed 26th in Tokyo, her shooting skills kept becoming better. Before putting on her finest performance of her career in Chateauroux, she recorded a personal best of 118/125 during the 2024 Olympic shotgun qualifications in Doha after qualifying for the Paris Games with gold at the 2023 Pan American Games.
Balancing careers
Adriana had the talent and the drive, but there were still obstacles to overcome. In Guatemala, financing for shooting, a comparatively modest sport, is scarce. The nation’s sole shotgun range is situated in
“It has never been easy to raise money. My family helped me out, and the National Olympic Committee provided ammo before to the Olympics. We still can’t shoot nearly as much as shooters from other nations, though. Additionally, we are unable to attend as many competitions as others,” she says.
READ AS WELL
When Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec goes viral, my daughter finds it extremely significant.
Even after earning a gold medal at the Olympics, Adriana continues to divide her days between working as a
“I don’t shoot for a living. I work as a sports dietitian and consult in a clinic in Guatemala. “I work with regular clients who want to gain or lose weight, but I want to specialize in working with athletes,” she explains.
Although Adriana does not anticipate shooting being the most popular sport in Guatemala overnight, she is hopeful that things will improve after the Olympics.
The fact that Guatemala took home two Olympic medals—Jean Pierre Brol took home bronze in the men’s trap—is a major accomplishment. These were just Guatemala’s second and third Olympic medals. The interest in shooting has suddenly increased significantly. The Guatemalan Federation is receiving a lot of calls from people who want to learn how to do this.
A great deal of awareness was raised by our performances. The government has begun construction of a new shotgun range as part of its assistance.
Her life has also changed. “There has been a lot of media coverage. I believe that life cannot be returned to its pre-Olympic state. There is a great deal more accountability now. Since there aren’t many Olympic medallists from Guatemala, I must be the best example. She says, “I have to be the best example of a good person and an athlete.”
She isn’t whining. “I never thought I’d be where I am now when I first started shooting. I felt like my gymnastics career was ended, which made me very sad. However, I think it demonstrates that possibilities always present themselves, even when we feel like we’re in a horrible place. All we have to do is search for them,” she explains.
