Peng Chia Mao launches incredible comeback

Both junior individual finals in the recurve competitions had USA athletes competing – and it meant the crowd was full.

The shooting order was rearrange, so Collin Klimitchek would shoot before Mackenzie Brown and the girls’ gold medal match. Collin had already collected silver in the team event.

He left his individual match against Min Byeongyeon with a second silver medal. The Korean shot an incredibly consistent match, scoring less than 29 points in a set just once.

Mackenzie’s junior women’s match-up with Peng Chia Mao, of Chinese Taipei, was the headline event.

For the first two sets and for the USA crowd, it lived up to its billing.

Brown stood tall, proud and shot arrow after arrow into the yellow. Her first two sets were of 28 and 29 points, one after the other, and she left her opponent in the dust.

Four-nil up and on set point, her confident demeanour somehow evaporated.

Peng Chia Mao shot six straight 10s, two perfect-30 sets and levelled up the match. She was cold and emotionless, and incredibly efficient.

“Mackenzie was better for the first few ends, but I didn’t care about her,” Chia Mao said. “I just cared about me, about what I was doing and what I could do.”

On home turf, Brown still had a chance to take gold in the fifth and final set, but it looked like she’d lost the mental edge she began with.

Her second arrow landed in the seven, and it looked nothing like the cleanly-executed releases that had been an obvious feature of her shooting through the first two sets.

She managed 25 points, Peng put two more in the 10 – and one in the nine – for 29.

Peng had stolen gold and a world champion title in a match that looked all but won. “It was a big match,” she said, afterwards – in something of an understatement.

It was huge.

Russia’s Tuyana Dashidorzhieva won bronze in straight sets.

The USA had an individual medal during the cadet’s morning competition, too. Eliana Claps collected a third place in the girls’ event.recurv 

She shot impressive groups through the first two sets and was quickly 5-1 set points up on Italian opponent Tanya Giaccheri.

Tanya shot a seven during what would be the final set of the match and Eliana capitalised, shooting one point more over the three arrows and sealing the win.

States girl Eliana said she enjoyed the adrenaline that came with entering the arena: “It was a fascinating feeling.”

The three individual podiums brought the USA’s medal tally up to a gigantic 14 at the Yankton 2015 World Archery Youth Championships, the most of any nation competing.