Last chance to qualify for Singapore!

Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Ireland, Romania, Serbia and Sweden for the boys and Denmark, Estonia, Greece and Sweden for the girls have one more chance to qualify for the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. They will compete against Belgium, Germany, Finland, Turkey for the boys and Great Britain, Slovenia and Switzerland for the girls who already obtained one place in the World Archery Youth Championships.   Germany and Belarus have just been allocated a standby place for the girls after Mauritius and Tonga could not fulfil the requirements to obtain a universality place from the International Olympic Committee. The pressure is therefore lower for Germany since it is among the biggest archery countries and so far they did not obtain any quota place. The Germans have a strong youth programme and it was a shock for all involved that they failed to obtain places in Ogden last year. They will now try to obtain the second place in the boys' event. Belarus has now both a place for a boy and a girl.   The last qualification will take place on 20 May 2010 and will consist of a 72-arrow ranking round at 70m followed by an elimination and a finals round using the new set system at 70m. The two countries that will obtain the first two places will obtain a quota place.   World Archery is very pleased to see that already 37 countries will compete in Singapore for these inaugural Games. If we look at the continental distribution prior to the European qualifiers, we see that Europe will have the largest number of participants which is due to the extensive youth development programmes in Europe. The Youth Olympic Games will help World Archery to have more of such programmes around the world and by the 2014 Nanjing Youth Games this balance will have shifted for sure to the other continents.

However, in terms of the fight for the medals we can expect strong challenges from Asia with very high hopes for a medal from Korea, China and India.   After the European qualifiers which will add two more boys and two more girls, the International Olympic Committee will allocate four more universality places. These places will be awarded to countries that have not been able to obtain four individual places across sports.   You can follow the results live through the EMAU website at www.emau.org.   The list of qualified countries can be found at www.worldarchery.org, section OLYMPICS/Youth Olympics/Singapore 2010/Quota Places.   World Archery Communication
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