Sara Lopez can build an unassailable legacy in 2022

We’re excited. Are you? The outdoor season is officially in progress and the international calendar is just weeks away, with the 2022 Hyundai Archery World Cup starting later this month in Antalya.

Four stages – the opener in Turkey, followed by stops in Korea, France and Colombia – lay on the path to the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in Tlaxcala, Mexico in October, where only the world’s very best archers will be invited to battle for a share of a prize purse totalling more than 300,000 CHF.

And once again, we go into the season poised to watch some of the sport’s greatest athletes make history.

Last year’s international circuit was significant for many reasons, not least because it marked a return to competition after a season in 2020 that was cancelled due to the pandemic. On the field, though, the big story was the race to six – who, of legends Brady Ellison and Sara Lopez, if either, would be the first to reach the phenomenal milestone?

We know how it played out.

Neither impressed at the season opener, then Brady won back-to-back stages in Lausanne and Paris, while Lopez left it until the last minute to book her spot at the Hyundai Archery World Cup, producing one of the all-time best matches to qualify in the French capital. The Colombian compounder would then defeat Ellison’s wife, Toja, in another classic contest to take the circuit title (just days after winning the worlds) before Brady would miss out on matching Sara’s victory in a single-arrow shoot-off.

“Maybe next year they will put recurve day first and I will get it, and then she’ll have the pressure on her and I won’t have all this pressure to always keep up with her,” joked Brady after his loss in Yankton last September.

Unfortunately for the recurve men’s world number one, that doesn’t look to be the case. Compound is set to retain its usual Saturday slot, followed by the recurves on Sunday for this year’s Hyundai Archery World Cup Final once again.

We’re a long way from that event in Tlaxcala, though, with plenty of competition arrows to shoot in the meantime.

Five archers have won three or more Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion trophies in the circuit’s 15-year history to date: Sara Lopez, who leads with six, Brady Ellison has five, while Mike Schloesser, Kim Woojin and Ki Bo Bae – who isn’t currently active on the international scene – have three each. 

The small number of names on that list proves only how difficult it is to dominate this sport over multiple years – and just how impressively Lopez and Ellison’s records, in particular, should be regarded.

And while Sara’s raw scores are no longer in a different league to those of her contemporaries, she retains an undeniable edge in matchplay, where she has not dropped below an 85% international win rate since 2015. Should that continue, she will be a favourite to collect her seventh Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion crown come October.

And if that happens, she’ll have gone a long way to building a legacy that might never be beaten.

Read our guide to the 2022 Hyundai Archery World Cup before the start of the season on 18-24 April in Antalya, Turkey.