Lopez ends junior career with gold, silver

Sara Lopez is one of compound archery’s best-known and most successful international athletes.

She holds the senior world records for the 72-arrow compound ranking round and the 15-arrow match, shot over 50 metres, is a senior world champion with the Colombian compound squad and won the Lausanne 2014 Archery World Cup Final.

Yankton was her last event as a junior.

Arriving with a view to defend her individual and mixed team junior world titles, disaster struck Sara in the eliminations.

She missed two arrows of her quarterfinal match when water entered her peepsight and she was unable to clear it in time. The shots landed on the foam target but did not score.

“I was so angry because I lost to something that was out of my hands,” Sara said later in the week.

“My scores were the best on the field and I was feeling strong.”

While Sara would not have the chance to defend her individual crown during the finals on compound Saturday in Yankton, she did have the chance to collect a title she had never held before – with her junior women’s team.

The Colombian compound girls shot in an interesting team order.

Lopez started the rotation, Nora Valdez shot second and Paula Roman third. For the second three-arrow series of each end, the order was flipped, Nora going first, Paula second and Sara acting as anchor.

The South Americans led USA throughout the match and were two points up with six arrows left to shoot.

In a perfect illustration of how quickly the advantage in a team match can reverse, Colombia suddenly trailed by one point three arrows later.

Valdez then shot a seven – and Colombia was out of contention.

Paula Roman and Sara Lopez both scored 10s but it did not matter, the USA won junior women’s team gold by a point, 219-218.

In her last trip to the archery arena as a junior, LOPEZ walked out with teammate Camilo Cardona, facing a shot at a second mixed team title in a row.

The Colombian pair, who come from the same part of the country and train at the same club in the city of Pereira, would shoot against Denmark: Top qualifier Stephan Hansen and Tanja Jensen.

Cardona had switched from his normal set up for the match: “I usually shoot with a back tension release,” he said. “But after talking to my coach this morning, I switched to a trigger because of the wind.”

“I used the trigger before, in Yankton, in some of the elimination rounds.”

It turned out to be, in Camilo’s words, a great decision.

The tilt was high scoring, with Lopez and Cardona nurturing a one-point lead they claimed with their first arrows for quite some time.

In the third, end, Camilo shot an eight. He had only put arrows into the 10 up until that point. Fortunately for Colombia’s pair, Jensen had put an arrow in the red for Denmark, too.

The match levelled at 114 each.

“We wanted to close with a perfect score and we did,” said Lopez. “It was a good way to finish our junior careers.”

She and Camilo shot clean for the last four arrows – 40 – while Tanja put one in the nine, handing Colombia, and Lopez and Cardona, a second junior mixed team world title in a row.

Lopez, though, already has her eyes on the next prize: “I’m preparing to win gold in Copenhagen and I’ll keep training towards that goal.”