5 July 2011 - Recurve Men's Qualification at World Archery Championships

Recurve Men's Qualification at World Archery Championships Turin – 5 July 2011   Tuesday, 5 July was the second day of competition at the World Archery Championships 2011 in Turin, Italy. Qualification took place in the 18th-century hunting residence of Stupinigi. In addition to the world titles that will be awarded, this competition takes on great importance: 35 places out of 64 per gender for the London 2012 Olympic Games will be allocated in Turin. And it will be the first time that archery crowns Mixed Team world champions. The event will then be directly followed by the World Archery Para Championships on 10-17 July.   Recurve Men The most important goal of the day for the competitors was to rank among the best 16 teams in order to get a chance to compete in the 1/8 elimination match for Olympic qualification (top 8 teams will earn three spots). See the notes below for more information…   The recurve men shoot a FITA Round (144 arrows in total at four distances, 90m, 70m, 50m, and 30m) for qualification. After the first distance, Laurence GODFREY (GBR) was in the lead (329 points), one point ahead of OH Jin Hyek (KOR). Brady ELLISON (USA), 2010 World Cup defender and 2011 World Cup Stage 1 winner, was 3rd (326). Jantsan GANTUGS (MGL) and Bair BADENOV (RUS) were tied at 8th position (320). At that time of the competition, six archers were tied at 104th place (287), the last qualifying spot for the elimination round.   Halfway through qualification ELLISON managed to leap up from 3rd to 1st place (668) and Jayanta TALUKDAR (IND) from 6th to 2nd (666). Shooting only the 13th best score at 70m GODFREY came down from 1st to 3rd place (665). The Korean representatives were in ambush at the time with IM Dong-Hyun 4th (664), OH 5th (662) and KIM Woojin 7th (659). Two other archers had the same score as KIM: GANTUGS (6th) and Jason LYON (CAN/8th). The cut was at 603 points with four competitors tied at 102th place.   At 50m the highest score was shot by KIM who leaped up to 4th place (1003). Just one point ahead was TALUKDAR (1004), 3rd. ELLISON was still in the lead (1008) but under threat from IM (1007). With only the 23rd score at the distance GANTUGS lost one more place to rank 7th. The best progress was achieved by Rick VAN DER VEN (NED). With the 3rd score at 50m, the Dutchman came back from 59th to 29th. The cut was still among four competitors at 922 points.   ELLISON and IM proved very close to one another all the way through to finish with the same score at 1366 points each. The Korean was finally ranked 1st and the American 2nd, decided on the number of X10 they shot, 36 and 34 respectively. IM's teammates, KIM and OH, finished just behind, 3rd and 4th, with both 1358 points. TALUKDAR (1354), GODFREY (1352), KUO Cheng Wei (TPE) and LYON (1350) took the next and last four top 8 places. The archer from Mongolia GANTUGS finally just missed the 8th place for four points (9th/1346). There was an interesting shoot-off between six competitors for the last three qualifying spots. Michail PAPAVISILEIOU (GRE), Pal CSOREGH (HUN), Keith HANLON (IRL), Daniel PINEDA (COL), Brendan O'HANLON (IRL), and Hiroki SUETAKE (JPN) indeed finished qualification with the same score of 1266. In the tie-break they all released their one arrow quickly within 23 seconds. While the Colombian and the Japanese were out with a 9, the four others scored a 10 each. The arrows by the Greek and the Hungarian were the closest to the centre qualifying PAPAVISILEIOU and CSOREGH. Those of the two Irishmen were judged exactly the same distance (!) to the centre, and therefore, HANLON and O'HANLON had to go through an additional tie-break! Finally, it was the first named going to get the last qualifying spot with a better second shoot-off arrow than his teammate.   Team Event In the recurve men's team qualification, where the first Olympic quota places will be awarded, Korea unsurprisingly led the ranking with 975 points after the first distance. The host country Italy came 2nd (948) and Mexico 3rd (944). The 16th provisional place was for India at the time (900), three points ahead of two countries, Mongolia and Belarus, and four points to Kazakhstan. The top 16 teams will qualify for the 1/8 elimination round for a match of high importance. Indeed, the eight winning will earn three Olympic spots for London!   After two distances Korea (1985) and Italy (1956) remained at 1st and 2nd places. France (1945) overtook Mexico (1939) by six points. India, 16th after 90m, leaped up to 12th (1895), leaving the last qualifying spots provisionally to Spain (1877).   With only one distance to go, the top 3 remained unchanged. Korea (3010) was impressive on the field with a 58-point advantage over Italy (2952) and 65 points ahead of France (2945). Mexico again lost one more place to be 5th after 50m with 2937 points. USA came up from 6th to 4th (2938), while China went down from 5th to 8th (2924). Spain kept the 16th place at that time with 2857 points, but under threat from Belarus (2856).   After 432 arrows, Team Korea clinched 1st place with 4082 points, way ahead of Italy (4012) and France (3999). The only change in the top 8 was in fact China (7th/3982) and Great Britain (8th/3973) exchanging places. The last distance was fatal to the team of Spain, going down to 19th place (3896), to the benefit of Japan who just clinched the last qualifying sport (16th/3906). They therefore kept the dream alive to be amongst the top 8 teams earning Olympic spots, but for that, they will have the difficult task to beat Korea in 1/8 elimination!   Mixed Team For the first time in history, a recurve mixed team title will be attributed in Turin. Mixed teams have now competed in the Archery World Cup for the last two years and the dominant countries are Korea, USA, China, India, France and Ukraine.   After the first distance in Turin the Korean recurve pair OH Jin Hyek/KI Bo Bae (1717 points) had a comfortable lead of 32 points over their first runner-ups, Chinese Taipei (KUO Cheng Wei/LE Chieh-Ying) and China (CHEN Wenyuan/FANG Yuting), both teams with 1675 points. The 16th and last qualifying place for elimination was provisionally taken by Ukraine (Dmytro HRACHOV/Victoriya KOVAL) with 1635 points, six points ahead of Belarus.   The best three pairs, Korea (2053), China (2013) and Chinese Taipei (2010), stayed in the lead at the half-way mark, joined on top of the ranking by another Asian team, India (2009). At 16th place was Denmark (1961), while Ukraine gained two places (14th/1971).   There were some slight moves among the top 8, but the eight doubles remained the same. Korea was far ahead (2396) of Chinese Taipei (2350), India (2347), China (2343), USA (2341), Great Britain and Italy (2339), and Japan (2330). At 15th and 16th places were the pairs from D.P.R. Korea and Denmark (2289), only three points in front of Belarus (2286), 17th.   No changes in the top 8 of the recurve mixed team event after four distances. As for what concerns the 16th and last qualifying place for the 1/8 elimination round, D.P.R. Korea and Denmark finished on the same score of 2289, keeping their 3-point advantage over Belarus (2286) until the end.   After qualification on Monday and Tuesday, all team and mixed team elimination matches up to the semifinals will be shot on Wednesday, 6 July 2011.   Compound Shoot-offs Some shoot-offs were needed in the compound men's individual qualification that took place on Monday. Those tie-break arrows were shot on Tuesday after the recurve men's qualification ended. Four archers, Pierre Julien DELOCHE (FRA), Sergio PAGNI (ITA), Slavko TURSIC (SLO), and Dominique GENET (FRA) all scored 705 points between 6th and 9th places. As the top 8 are exempt from the first two elimination rounds, then an arrow had to be shot to decide on the three archers taking those places. Finally, the Frenchman DELOCHE ranked 9th and will start shooting in the first round.   Five other competitors went through a shoot-off, but this time it was of higher importance: the tie-break was to decide the last two qualifiers, as Njaal AAMAAS (NOR), Borislav KRSTIC (SRB), Gilles SEYWERT (LUX), Filip REITMEIER (CZE), and Miroslav BOJCUN (SVK) were tied with 674 points from 103rd to 107th places. After one shoot-off arrow each, the archers from Luxembourg and Czech Republic clinched the elimination spots.   After the qualification rounds on Monday and Tuesday, all team and mixed team elimination matches will take place on Wednesday, 6 July 2011.   Notes More than 600 archers from close to 90 countries shoot for world titles, medals and Olympic berths. Only the recurve division is competed at the Olympic Games. Therefore, the top 8 recurve teams per gender in Turin will earn three Olympic spots (one for each team member) for London 2012. As host country, Great Britain also earns one team spot automatically. This means that if Great Britain is in the top 8, the 9th team in the competition will also qualify. Moreover, the top 8 individuals (from other countries than the qualified teams) will also earn one berth. This makes 35 places that are non-nominative—places belong to the country. There will be subsequent continental qualifiers until the Olympic Games to reach 64 athletes per gender.   The event is presented as the most important sports event hosted by Turin, former capital of Italy, in the year when the country celebrates the 150th anniversary of its reunion. A sports event that, even in the choice of venues, seems to fit perfectly into the calendar of events dedicated to this historical celebration. The venues for the World Archery Championships are directly connected to the events and personalities of the ItalianRenaissance: the qualifications and first rounds of eliminations take place in the 18th-century hunting residence of Stupinigi, which is one of the Savoy palaces designed by Filippo JUVARRA. The final matches will be contested in the Piazza Castello, the old parade ground in the heart of the city which is overlooked by Palazzo Reale, Palazzo Madama, and other symbolic buildings of baroque age.   Ludivine MAITRE WICKI / Didier MIEVILLE World Archery Communication