Dos-Santos (BRA) makes his way to a World Cup Final !

The Individual eliminations matches took place today at the Stage 2 of the Archery World Cup in Antalya, all the way through the semi-finals. The finals will be played on Saturday on live Turkish television.    Recurve Men 

In the recurve division, the winner of the first World Cup stage that took place two weeks ago in Porec, Croatia, Jajanta Talukdar from India had to battle hard to keep his place as a favorite and go on in the competition. He needed a shoot-off in his 1/32 match to defeat Oibek Saidiev of Kazakhstan. Shooting first his additional arrow after the match was tied at 104 points, Saidiev scored a good 9 forcing Talukdar to make a perfect 10 to win. What he did! The Indian revelation of this season’s beginning has shown that he is able to hold his nerve in unfavoured situations. After that, Talukdar had quite a hard time again in the 1/16 final to qualify to the next step of the competition: he won over Mexican Eduardo Magana on a tight 110-109 score.

 

The recurve men competition has proved once again that the Koreans are not alone any more and that a large number of countries can aspire to a medal. Out of the four Korean competitors (ranked at the first four places after the qualification), “only” two of them reached the quarterfinals. Whereas Park easily defeated Van Alten (NED) 112-103 and Im won over Di Buo (ITA) 109-108 in their 1/8 elimination matches, Lee was stopped by Petersson (SWE) 110-106 and Yeon by Hristov (BUL) 113-106. In this match, the Bulgarian Hristov scored the best total with his 113.

 

This let the spectators with four great matches to come! Korean Park was then facing Indian Talukdar, Frangilli (ITA) was meeting Petersson (SWE), Im (KOR) vs Yamamoto (JPN) for a 100% Asian quarterfinal, and 42nd seed Yong (CHN) vs 18th seed Hristov (BUL).

 

In a very tight match that required a shoot-off to decide the winner, Park gained the upper hand on Porec World Cup winner Talukdar with a 10-9 additional arrow. The three other matches were less tense than expected with all easy victories: Frangilli-Petersson 112-103, Yamamoto-Im 112-106, and Yong-Hristov 109-105.

 

The archer who left the strongest impression on the field today was without a doubt the 1984 Olympic bronze medalist and 2004 Olympic silver medalist Hiroshi Yamamoto. The 43-year old Japanese did not shoot any score below 111 in all his five matches this afternoon (112, 114, 111, 112 and 114)! In the semi-final, one of the most regular archers on the circuit but never so well ranked as here in Antalya, the 30-year old Yavor Hristov of Bulgaria could not contradict his more experienced opponent: though shooting a very good score of 110, he had to bow before Yamamoto’s 114 points.

 

The secret of Yamamoto’s longevity? “I do my best everyday, step by step. At first I never shoot for a gold medal, but I do my best every time and this is what leads me to medals”, he declared after his final victory of the day. After Antalya the most important thing for him will be to do well at the Asian Trial Final that will take place in his country in two weeks. And when one asks him why he is always smiling on the field, his answer is: “For me, shooting is a pleasing time; it is a REFRESHMENT!

 

In the second recurve men semi-final 1-seed Park (KOR) took advantage of the very bad start of his opponent Frangilli (ITA) to win the right to fight for gold on Saturday. After a poor end of 24, the Italian archer shot a 28-29-28 series to finish with an honorable score of 109. Park made the difference being more regular from the beginning (28-28-28-27) and gained victory with 111 points.

 

Compound Men

A Brazilian made a show just before the football World Cup… With scores as high as 113, 115, 118 and 117, successively in his matches, Dos Santos was scoring sky high. The Swiss Hofer was equally impressive all day with 114, 118, 117 and 117. The semi-final of these two archers was tied and they had to go into a sudden death shoot off. The Brazilian shot a perfect 10, while the Swiss released his arrow a bit too soon for a 9. Hofer said : “In the shoot-off, I saw the yellow and the arrow left… It was too soon. Too bad, I was shooting really good today and I think I hadn’t lost a shoot-off in the last two years.” Shoot-off is a difficult exercise that the Danish Henriksen mastered today. In the first round, he had to shoot three arrows in over-time to defeat Wakelin (GBR). To note, at the third arrow, the judges will measure the distance to the center of the target to declare the winner. In the second round, Henriksen had to release another time three arrows in shoot-off to beat Carlsson (SWE). The Danish ran out of juice when he met Dos Santos in 1/8 of final. Another good surprise was the fact of Zamanyejad (IRI) who beat Genet (FRA) in the 1/8 of final 118-115. He then lost to Hofer in the quarter.

 

 

Dos Santos Roberval (BRA)

 

In the other semi, Elzinga (NED) was the representative of a fratricide Netherland fight. In 1/8 of final, Elzinga beat teammate Custer 111-108. In the quarter-final, he beat an other team-member Van Zutphen (NED) in double shoot-off ! They tied the game at 115, then both shot a 10 in the first arrow of overtime, before Elzinga made another 10 compared to a 9 for his opponent. In the semi-final, he didn’t disappoint his colleagues beating Jimenez (ESA) 115-112. For sure the Salvadorian will be looking for revenge in less than two weeks at home, in San Salvador, for the stage 3 of the World Cup.

 

Recurve Women In the recurve women category, Koreans Lee Sung Jin and Lee Tuk Yuk easily advance to the 1/16 round with victories over Italian Frigieri who was finalist in Porec (112-101) and French Vandionnant (112-102).  
Alison Williamson of Great Britain, Bronze medalist at the Athens Olympics in 2004, has already finished her individual competition here in Antalya after she was beaten by Miller from USA in the first match of the day. The score was very close: 106-107.  
Two matches needed a shoot off to decide between the competitors: Ukrainian Berezhina defeated Beloslyudtseva of Kazakhstan after a 9-8 shoot off. In the other shoot off match between Satir of Turkey and Narimabidze of Georgia needed two arrows each to decide on the winner. After shooting both a perfect 10, Narimabidze then took over her local opponent on the second shoot off arrow. 
 
Half of the athletes who advanced to the recurve women 1/8 eliminations were Asian: 4 Koreans, 2 Chinese, 1 Japanese and 1 Indian. The eight other archers in this round were the Poland (3), USA (2), Italy (2) and Georgia (1).  
The best score of this round in the recurve bow division was achieved by the young Korean Lee Tuk Young who was silver medal last year in the World Championships in Madrid. She scored 113, whereas Indian Banerjee shot an excellent 112 to defeat her Chinese opponent Zhang.  
Qian Jialing (CHN)  
The quarterfinals were almost 100% Asian in this category, since 7 of them qualified for this round. Mospinek from Poland was the only “foreigner” to keep the right to counter the Asian superiority here in Antalya. Unfortunately, after a good start in here match to the Chinese Qian, Mospinek had to leave the victory (108-106) to her opponent, the first seed of the qualification.  
In the “Lees battle”, the young Lee Tuk Young took revenge over her teammate World Champion Lee Sun Jin in a very close match (111-110), who had defeated her in the gold final match last year in Madrid. The two other Korean archers, Yun and Kim both advanced to the semi-finals as well with victories over Japanese Asano (110-104) and Indian Banerjee (112-104) respectively. 
 
The last matches of the morning in Antalya were deciding who among the individual female archers would be shooting for gold or for bronze on Saturday. The semifinals of the recurve women division set against each other three Korean athletes and one Chinese showing that Asia is still leading the recurve bow world. The two matches put together on the one hand Qian Jialing (CHN) and Lee Tuk Yuk (KOR), whereas on the other hand Yun Ho Hee (KOR) was fighting against her teammate Kim Yu Mi.  
No real surprise at the end with the two best ranked archers after the qualification, namely Chinese Qian (1) and Korean Kim (2), both meeting in the gold match. The Chinese archer started slowly but then had to go up in potency in order to win the right to fight for the title. Her scores in her matches this morning were 106, 106, 105, 108 and finally 112 to beat the youngest Lee who shot a score of 109 in semifinal. For her part, Kim scored 104, 111, 105, 112 and 109 in today’s matches. In fact, she was never in danger this morning, except when she faced her teammate Yun in her semifinal (109-107).  

Compound Women

It has been an almost all-Russian affair in compound women with 3 representatives in the semi-finals. The only break in the hegemony was the fact of Simpson (GBR) who shot a very good 113 pts in her quarter-final. The British was beaten in her semi by the winner of the first World Cup event in Porec, Kazantseva (RUS). After surviving her 2nd round match vs Besra (IND) – 114-111 pts – the Russian had an easy way to the Final. She will face the number 1 seed after the qualifications, Goncharova (RUS). After 6 arrows in her semi-final, she was tied with another teammate, Bolotova (RUS) at 56 pts. Goncharova made the difference in the 3rd end scoring a 29 out of 30 pts, while her opponent only achieved 25 pts. Final score was 113 – 108 pts. Bolotova had a good day until that 3rd end, beating Soemod (DEN) and Soy (IND) by only one point in previous rounds.

 

The whole team competition will take place on Friday, while the Individuals will come back for a real show with the bronze and medal matches on Saturday.

 
Ludivine Maitre Wicki / Didier Miéville 
FITA Communication