Umer continues strong run at Veronica’s Cup

Kamnik, Slovenia, which held the European Team Championships in 2013, hosted 100 athletes from 10 countries for its Veronica’s Cup world ranking event on 23/24 April. The competition’s name comes from the legend of a local countess, who was turned into a snake after refusing to give money to visting priests!

Shooting on home soil, Ana Umer and Gasper Strajhar qualified top in the recurve competitions, scoring 644 and 663, respectively, and combining for the join lead in the mixed team competition.

Ana converted her pole position into a smooth start in matchplay, holding her opponents to blank set scores in her first two rounds, then dispatching Poland’s Anna Tobolewska, 7-3, in the semis. Her final was against the second seeded Italian, Elena Tonetta.

Ana took the first set, then Elena the next two, to go 4-2 up.

Umer rallied. The pair drew the fourth, then Ana forced a draw at 5-5, and the match went to a shoot-off. Tonetta shot nine, Umer: 10.

She added a second gold medal with Strajhar as favourites in the mixed team event, while he took the recurve men’s individual competition title – despite a shoot-off scare in the quarterfinals – to make it two gold medals each for the top-seeded Slovenian pair.

Hungarian athlete Zoltan Bertalan took compound men’s gold and Amanda Milnaric, from Croatia, the compound women’s gold.