Aida, Juan Rene retain Mexico’s Wroclaw mixed team title

Coming off the practice field, Juan Rene Serrano said he and partner Aida Roman “were pounding the 10s”.

“We knew if we could do it on the field, we would win. I was a little nervous because it was only my second final this year. But then I got some points on the target, I shot three 10s, and I knew it was going to be fine.”

The match featured the two top recurve women’s individual seeds, as part of the mixed teams. Aida qualified first, India’s Deepika Kumari second. Kumari partnered with Mangal Singh Champia, a former fixture on the Archery World Cup circuit making something of a resurgence by returning to the Indian international team.

All four archers shot nines in the first set – and the points were split.

Soon after, Serrano and Roman shot their 10s and started pulling away. They won the second set by two points, the third set by one – both with 37-point four-arrow series – and the match was done. Mexico won its second mixed team gold medal in two years in Wroclaw.

Belarus’ Anton Prilepov and Alena Kuzniatzova beat a French pairing of JC Valladont and Sophie Planeix to the recurve mixed team bronze medal in Wroclaw.

The two split the first two sets, before the Belarussians capitalised on a couple of poor set totals from their opponents to take the match, 6-2. It was Planeix’s first finals appearance at her second Archery World Cup event – the first was Shanghai 2015 – and Prilepov’s first medal on the circuit.

His partner, Alena, had team and individual silver in Porec in 2010 – but that was quite some time ago!