Jean Pierre Brol has earned the first Olympic medal for Central America at the 2024 Paris Games.

The 41-year-old Guatemalan Olympic shooter defied the odds and took home a bronze medal in the Men’s Trap shooting competition at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Simply by making it to the last round, Brol had become the first Guatemalan shooter to reach an Olympic pit shooting final.

He entered the final after placing 5th in the previous round, scoring 122 points out of a possible 125. Even with this, he entered a tiebreaker since five other athletes reached that number of successful shots.

In the final he faced rivals such as the British Nathan Hales, world record holder in the category, and Derrick Mein, world runner-up in 2023.

In the first round he hit the first 22 shots out of 25, finishing in fifth place.

James Willett from Australia was eliminated after finishing in sixth place.

Brol missed the 25th shot that kept him in fifth and Mein surpassed him but in the last of the 30 he missed and Brol continued in the competition.

It’s the second medal in history for Guatemala, after the silver achieved by racewalker Érick Barrondo in the 2012 London Games.

It was a long time coming for Brol. He made his Olympic debut in London but failed to medal.

Similarly, Brol fell short at the 2020 Tokyo Games. But this time around, Brol became a pleasant surprise as millions of Guatemalans started their usual weekday routines, with President Bernardo Arévalo tweeting his congrats to the veteran shooter, saying his medal was a historic moment for Guatemala.