Paris, FRA – Virginie Chénier got her chance to hit the elimination fields at Paris 2024, after not competing since July 25th in the qualification round, due to team round and mixed team round schedules.
After qualifying in 33rd, Chénier took to the field to face the 32 seed in Rezza Octavia, of Indonesia. Chénier started her campaign with a triple 8 score, trying to dial it into the yellow, giving Octavia an early 2 point lead. In the next end, it looked like she found her groove taking the set with a 10-10-10, a perfect thirty in the second set.
Moving into the third and fourth set though, Octavia held onto the consistency, and just edged over Virginie, to take the match with a final score of 6-2.
“It is tough to lose your first match. There are lots of emotions to deal with right now, could we have done this, could we have done that?” said coach Ron van der Hoff. He continued, “ The reality is that we have to accept that nothing can be changed anymore. We can only learn. Right now Virginie is feeling down but we will make sure she will bounce back, learn and grow from this experience at her first Olympic Games.
“I was a little bit shaky, and it’s harder to make strong shots when the nerves manifest in a physical way” , said Virginie. “The crowd was cheering for me, and it’s nice to have the crowd on your side, just couldn’t pull it together.”
Virginie Chénier highlighted that for her first games the more exposure she has to an event, the better she feels. As this was Virginie’s debut at the Olympic Games, which boasts much larger crowds and noise than archery athletes are typically used to, it will just help her to get stronger and add to her preparedness as she moves forward to future events.
The Canadian Archery team is not yet done though in Paris. Team mate Eric Peters will be facing Mauro Nespoli of Italy in the 1/8th round on Sunday August 4th. Coverage of the event will be found on CBC, with Eric’s match set to kick off at 3:55 am EST.
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For question or inquiries, please contact:
Kylah Cawley
High Performance Manager
Archery Canada
kcawley@archerycanada.ca