The Rise of Sport Shooting Prodigy Andrea Ibarra

After winning her first medal in a senior World Cup last February in Granada, Spain, national team member Andrea Victoria Ibarra Miranda is getting ready to compete in the XIV Americas Shooting Sport Championship, rifle and pistol modality, from March 31 to April 8 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she is looking for her place at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The Sonora native, a pistol specialist, said that her runner-up finish in the international competition in Spain is a great incentive to seek the coveted ticket to the great sporting event.

“It was a very good competition for me, a new experience, it opened my mind. Those two World Cups that happened on that tour (Egypt and Spain), make me continue to strive, to see that you can actually make it to the final and this medal gives me a lot of happiness, it is my first medal in a World Cup, and I am grateful because I made it,“ she said.

“I feel good, motivated to get the Olympic place, but without rushing anything, everything in time, let's hope that in this competition in Buenos Aires the quota is achieved; if it is achieved very well and if not, we have to keep working, because there are many who want their place like me,” she added.

At 20 years old, Andrea Ibarra reaffirms her level in Mexican sport shooting, in the pistol modality, she achieved two podiums in the Junior Pan American Games Cali-Valle 2021, her debut with gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Games San Salvador 2023, as well as in the Pan American Games Santiago 2023 in mixed team, confirm that good results have been a constant for her.

“The road has been long and very different with new competitions I have had. Last year with my debut in the Central American and Pan American Games, it was a superb 2023, grateful with what happened, I never imagined that in the first ones I would do so well and that demands me more to continue, we have not stopped training, that's why the good results,” she commented.

The Shooting Sport Championship of the Americas, in the rifle and pistol modalities, will be the opportunity for the Mexican national team to increase its number of Olympic places, since the competition will distribute one quota per event.

So far, Mexico has four places in sport shooting for Paris 2024 obtained by Edson Ramirez (10-meter air rifle), Alejandra Zavala (25-meter pistol), Gabriela Rodriguez (skeet) and Carlos Quezada (3x20 rifle).