Sonnichsen, Lopez qualify for Hyundai Archery World Cup Final

World number two Sarah Sonnichsen, seeded top in Salt Lake City, ran her bracket to qualify for her third consecutive gold medal match on the Hyundai Archery World Cup tour, despite feeling sick.

“Maybe it helped me because I wasn’t nervous at all. I won the first match and then was like, I just need my bed, then I won second one and though, okay, this is going alright,” she said.

“[All I was thinking about was] to survive. To stand up and to keep standing up. My legs were shaking. I think I managed to survive all matches. I could feel I wasn’t shooting my best.”

Sonnichsen beat Lee Ting-Hsuan, Choi Bomin and World Archery Champion Kim Yunhee with 144+ 15-arrow match scores before surviving a semifinal against Song Yun Soo. Last year‘s Hyundai Archery World Cup Final runner-up’s 140 points was enough to pass as the wind picked up.

World number one Sara Lopez beat Tanja Jensen, the archer who broke her match winning streak in Antalya, in the last 16, but eventually came up short by a point to Andrea Marcos in the semifinals.

“I had some doubts with my last arrows and thought we would go to another shoot-off, and I didn’t think I’d do it. I really needed to defend each arrow. She is very consistent but I know that I am doing well, and I will do my best to give a tight final,” said Marcos, who survived two tiebreakers in her first two matches.

Both Sonnichsen and Lopez have shot for medals in each of the first three stages of the 2017 Hyundai Archery World Cup, securing enough points to qualify for this season’s Hyundai Archery World Cup Final.

Lopez won the Final in 2014 and 2015, while Sonnichsen was runner-up in 2016.

The third stage of the 2017 Hyundai Archery World Cup runs 20 to 25 June in Salt Lake City, USA

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