Mete’s Boogie Takes Turkish Juniors to Home-field Arena

After shooting one last 10 to take a semifinal victory over the Ukraine and secure a ticket to the recurve junior men’s gold medal match at Ankara 2016 for his team, Mete Gazoz raised his arms and gave a little dance.

“At the training camp, I told my coaches I’d dance this move if we made the final in Ankara,” said Mete. “We made the final, and I danced the move!”

Mete, Onur Tezel and Oguzhan Kucuk, seeded second, beat France, 6-0, in the quarterfinals, putting only three arrows in 18 shots out of the 10 ring. The trio were similarly impressive against Ukraine, averaging 58 out of 60 points a set in the 5-3 victory.

Tied at three-all, the Ukrainian team put arrows in the eight and six early in the deciding set. Across on the line, Onur had started strong for the young Turkish men, drilling a pair of 10s and putting his team in front.

“I was just doing my job,” he said, grinning.

As did his two teammates, including the more-experienced Gazoz, who competed at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing in the summer of 2014, when he calmly finished off the six-arrow set with a perfect closing arrow.

Turkey’s compound junior women’s team also shoots for gold at the 12th World Archery Indoor Championships. Six points up heading into the final end, the Turkish women let off on the pressure and cruised to a 226-223 win over Italy.

Emotional after the match, the girls said they would do their very best to climb to the top of the podium on Sunday.

Turkey also has two individual junior finalists, both in compound bronze medal matches. Evrim Saglam shoots against the USA’s Athena Caiopoulos in the junior women’s final, while junior man Furkan Dernekli takes on Anton Bulaev, from Russia.