“Not enough 10s,” says Brady after bronze match

Two recurve men’s teams with promising young athletes – and full Rio 2016 Olympic men’s quotas under their belts – faced off for World Archery Championship bronze in Copenhagen.

The USA started comfortably, shooting a 54- then a 55-point total for the team’s first two sets.

Brady Ellison took to the line first for the States, followed by Collin Klimitchek then Zach Garrett for the first three arrows of each six-shot set. During the second half of each end, the order changed: Klimitchek first, Garrett second and Brady anchoring the team.

Chinese Taipei was slow out of the blocks. Kuo Cheng-Wei, Wang Hou-Chieh and Yu Guan-Lin posted a sub-par 51 for their first six arrows, with three in the red. The second set went better.

A 56 from Chinese Taipei was enough to level up the match – although the story might have been different if Zach Garrett hadn’t leaked his first arrow of the set into the seven, as the USA lost that series by just a point.

At 2-2, Garrett came through in the third with a 10-9 pair of arrows.

It just wasn’t quite enough. Chinese Taipei kept all six arrows in the gold rings and took the third set by a point: 56-55. The Asian team went 4-2 up – and the USA needed a win in the fourth to force a tiebreaker.

No shoot-off would be needed, though.

Ellison, Klimitchek and Garrett could not find the 10-ring in the fourth. Chinese Taipei kept all six in the gold for the third end in a row – and took the definitive set, 56-53, the match and the medal, six set points to two.

“I feel like we all shot pretty well but not all the shots always go in the middle,” said Collin Klimitchek. Zach added that the team shoots the best it possibly can in every medal match.

Brady’s recap was simple: “We just did not shoot enough 10s.”