From shooting at targets in a themed restaurant to tasting Youth Olympic silver

A large crowd gathered on Sunday afternoon in Parque Sarmiento to watch the second day of archery competitions at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. Kyla Touraine-Helias and Jose Manuel Solera, representing France and Spain respectively, won the gold medal in an event that features teams made up of one female and one male archer from different nationalities.

Cameras were also focused on the silver medal winners: Argentina’s Agustina Giannasio and Thailand’s Aitthiwat Soithong. Both athletes are just 15 years old and are the youngest representatives in their delegations.

“I don’t understand much about what’s going on, and I don’t know when it’s going to hit me that I’m an Olympic medallist,” Giannasio said, adding that when she woke up on Sunday morning she never imagined that a few hours later she was going to have a silver medal hanging around her neck.

Giannasio discovered her passion for archery in 2014 - when she was just 11 years old - during a family trip to Meliquina, a small town in Argentina’s Patagonia region.

Her family was having lunch at a restaurant called ‘La Arquería’ (Archery). Giannasio was intrigued by some archery targets that were hanging on the restaurant wall and asked her dad if she could give them a try. Her father was surprised by the request but talked to the restaurant manager who gave her permission to shoot her first arrows.

When lunch finished Agustina spent three hours learning how to shoot, and when they returned to Buenos Aires she enrolled in a local archery club. She never imagined that four years later she would be the first Youth Olympic archer in Argentina’s history, and become a silver medallist on top of it.