Nimes 2016 indoor archery titles claimed by recurve pair

After winning gold at the first stage of the Indoor Archery World Cup in Marrakesh, Guendalina Sartori had herself in a strong joint-pole position in the series rankings. She compounded her advantage – and secured herself a spot in the Final – with another win in Nimes.

Sixth-seeded Sartori faced Korean top qualifier Park Sehui in the gold medal match. Sehui shot a world record during qualifying.

The Italian 27-year-old had averaged 29-points a set through her first four matches but kept her very best for the Nimes finals arena. Unfazed by the crowd and spotlights, she started the match with a 9-10-10 then proceeded to not drop another arrow out of the 10-ring.

Park matched her in the first, but lost all three of the following sets to Sartori’s onslaught of perfect-30 series. Four sets in it was 7-1, and Sartori had the match.

“I was nervous for the first arrows because I knew the Korean was very strong. I approached the match arrow by arrow and it worked, I won,” she said.

“I’ve been training in a different training centre with [Italian head coach] Wietse van Alten since October. I’ve been working very hard, shooting, swimming and going to the gym every day.”

Guendalina qualified a recurve women’s spot for Italy to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the worlds in Copenhagen and has been shooting strong ever since.

She was joined by a second Italian archer on the top of the recurve podium.

First-time senior athlete Luca Melotto took his gold medal match with Alexander Kozhin the full-five sets. The pressure increased and increased as each archer put arrow after arrow into the 10. In fact, neither missed the centre through the first three sets.

Luca blinked first, shooting his first of the fourth wide nine and putting himself in a 5-3 hole for the deciding regulation set.

The crowd sighed as Russian man Kozhin – who had 13 straight 10s at this stage of the match – put one in the nine, too; the second shot of the fifth and last series. Melotto was back to perfect: 5-5 and the medal would be decided by a tiebreaker.

Luca shot first, shot linecutter 10 – then Alexander put his arrow in nearly exactly the same spot. Luca had thin arrows, Alexander fat – but it was the Italian’s that was called closer.

“I shot it just the same as any other arrow,” he said. “But it feels great to have won in a shoot-off.”

“I couldn’t see the crowd in the background when I was shooting, but I could feel them.”

Brady Ellison and Elena Tonetta took recurve men’s and recurve women’s bronze, respectively.

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