Canada will shoot for mixed team bronze in Gwangju
GWANGJU, KR – It was a busy day in Korea! Canada, represented by Stephanie Barrett and Eric Peters, started off in the mixed team ⅛ finals against 6th-ranked Italy. It was a tight match and was decided by a tiebreaker, ending with a score of 5-4 in favour of Canada. That advanced the duo onto the ¼ finals against the 3rd-ranked team from Chinese Taipei. Again, it came down to a tiebreaker, Canadians won the match with a score of 5-4. Their last mixed team match of the day was against 2nd-ranked Germany and while both teams were shooting strongly, Germany came out on top with a score of 6-0.
“Stephanie and Eric worked great together today in the team round; the scores were solid and the match wins showed that,” recaps Shawn Riggs, National Recurve Coach. “Unfortunately, Germany was really on fire today, but we’ll get them next time. We are really looking forward to shooting in the bronze medal match against the Netherlands (Tokyo Olympic silver medalists).”
Switching over to the individual matches later in the day, Peters faced off against Efe Gürkan Maras of Turkey in the 1/32 final; he walked away with a score of 6-4 and the win. He advanced onto the 1/16 finals where he shot against 10th-ranked Paoli Alessandro of Italy and won with a score of 6-0! Unfortunately, in the ⅛ finals, he was not able to win the match against Jayanta Talukdar from India, and finished with a score of 2-6.
Barrett faced 47th-ranked Sarah Haywood from Australia in the 1/32 final. It was a true back-and-forth, where the archers took turns winning ends 2 through 4. Barrett ended the match in the winner’s position, with a final score of 6-4. She went onto the 1/16 final, where she was slated against 15th-ranked German Michelle Kroppen. While Barrett unfortunately lost the match, the two athletes did not shoot any ends with a point difference bigger than two.
“Individually, Stephanie shot quite close to her training average, which is a good result at World Cup competition,” continues Riggs. “Eric shot some very high scores and took a very decisive 6-0 victory in the second round. Unfortunately, he had trouble against Jayanta from India in the third round and will finish 9th overall. This World Cup has arguably the strongest field of competitors that we’ve seen since the 2019 World Championships so the team should come away from here happy with how they’ve started the season.”
The next time we’ll see the Canadian archers is against the Netherlands in the mixed team bronze medal match on Sunday May 22 at 11:18 KST (Saturday May 21 at 22:18 EST).
For more information, please contact:
Zoe Meil
Communications & Safe Sport Coordinator, Archery Canada
(613) 260-2113 ext.3