Adriana Ruano has dominated the women's Olympic pit final from the start. Six athletes qualified in the morning session for the fight for the medals. And all six had finished neck and neck, with Spain's Mar Molne scoring the maximum 123 points and Australia's Penny Smith the minimum 121. The other four competitors finished tied on 122 hits from 125 plates.

The final is a best time competition. All finalists were required to shoot 25 targets. The lowest ranked at that point was eliminated. It was China's Wu Cuicui. From then on, one eliminated every five more targets.

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Spain had high hopes, having qualified two shooters for the final. But they were the next two to be eliminated. First, Fatima Galvez, champion at Tokyo 2020 in the mixed pit, which will not take place in Paris 2024, but will return in Los Angeles 2028. Then, Mar Molne, the best in the qualification phase, but who made eight mistakes in the 35 shots she fired.

The names of the three medallists were already known, but the colour of each metal was still to be decided. Ruano had a good lead, three hits ahead of Australia's Smith and Italy's Silvana Stanco. After a short break, the action returned for the next five throws.

Nerves got the better of Smith in that final medal fight. She missed her first two shots, and that left her too far behind. But she left the Games with the bronze medal. To decide the champion, a final round of 10 shots instead of five. Ruano already had a four-shot lead, and her pulse did not falter. Stanco was satisfied with the silver medal.

The next challenge for Ruano was to break the Olympic record. Slovakia's Zuzana Rehak set it at Tokyo 2020, when she broke 43 of the 50 targets in the final. The Guatemalan needed extra concentration, once she knew she was the champion, to achieve the best final of a Games. She did so by hitting the last two shots to finish with 45 hits.

Ruano, as a child, was oriented towards gymnastics, but an injury took her away from that sport. She then began to practice in the discipline of Olympic shooting. She was at Tokyo 2020, but finished 26th. 

Her first great triumph was at the 2023 Pan American Games, where she won the gold medal. In Paris, she has repeated her success and with an Olympic record. For the first time at an Olympic medal ceremony, the anthem played was that of Guatemala.