MEDELLIN, CO – There has been plenty of archery in Colombia over the last couple of days. There have been some unpredictable winds that have made the competition more challenging for all the archers on the shooting line. 

The men’s team of Eric Peters, Devaang Gupta, and Brandon Xuereb kicked off the elimination rounds on Thursday. Their first elimination round was against Chile, ranked 19th in the qualifications. It was a tight match, with Canada winning in a tiebreaker and a score of 5-4. The tiebreaker score was 28-26, an incredibly close match overall. The second match in eliminations was against Germany, who was ranked 3rd overall. Throughout 4 ends, there was never more than a 2-point differential between the two teams. They ended up having to go into a tiebreaker once again, and it was incredibly close. The two teams both shot a total of 26, but Germany had the closer arrow and therefore took the victory. 

In the mixed team, Stephanie Barrett and Eric Peters took to the shooting line for Canada on Friday morning. Their first match was against their Colombian hosts; the Canadians won the match decisively, 5-1, with only a tie in the first end. Advancing onto the ⅛ finals and facing #1-seeded Korea, the Canadians shot strong but fell to the top qualifiers. All ends were decided by no more than 2 points, but the final score was 6-0 in favour of the Korean pair. 

The afternoon brought on individual matches on both the men’s and women’s sides. Gupta was up against 12th-ranked Woo Seok Lee of Korea, and came away with the win in a tiebreaker. Lee shot a 9, while Gupta shot straight into the X. There was a strong showing from Gupta again in the third match against Felix Wieser (GER), where he scored 4 set points against Wieser’s 6, therefore not advancing further in the elimination bracket. 

“[The big win early on] felt pretty good,” comments Gupta. “I shot some good arrows, I shot some bad arrows, but in the end I was able to get in. Honestly, I was thinking about shooting my shot. There are a couple of technical aspects that I think in the future I will definitely work on. Overall, I’m disappointed that I lost but looking forward to next time.”

Eric Peters was also on the shooting line for Canada. His 1/32 final match was against Ken Sanchez Antoku (Spain), where he was able to win one end and tie two, but was unable to walk away with the victory.

Stephanie Barrett, who was ranked 46th in qualification, had a decisive first round win against 19th-seeded Denisa Barankova from Slovakia. She was 6 and 4 points ahead in the first two ends, respectively, and sealed her win in the third end. Her next elimination round was against Brazilian archer Ana Machado, where they tied the first end. After Barrett lost the second end, she came back and dominated the last three ends to win the match. This put her up against Cy Kang from Korea, who was ranked 6th in seeding and who was able to shoot strong to take the match with a win, therefore stopping Barrett from moving forward in the competition.  Shawn Riggs, National Recurve Coach, summarized a couple things from this competition. “A number of athletes achieved some goals certainly. Brandon was rather successful at achieving one of his mental performance goals. For Devaang, it’s his first World Cup event and he’s only 10 points off what he’s been doing in the domestic environment, which is really good, particularly when you see that the whole field was probably 10 points off because of weather. Eric and Stephanie were down from where we wanted but were both working on technical items. They’re gearing up as we realize that next season is really about peak performance. We’re looking at this year as a building year and it’s clear other countries are as well. We’re continuing to push them to make technical improvements with the equipment that they’re using this time so that when we get to Olympic qualifying next year, they’re in really good shape. By the end of this World Cup, we’ll have had four athletes who have either had their first World Cup experience or their first one in five years, which is really important.”

This stage of the World Cup is the fourth and final one before the finals taking place in Tlaxcala, Mexico later this year.

For more information, please contact:

Zoe Meil, Communications & Safe Sport Coordinator

zmeil@archerycanada.ca

(613) 260-2113 ext. 3