Can Alejandra Valencia lead Mexico in Gwangju like Roman did in London?

She was already the best archer on the team, but 5 November 2023 really did feel like the moment Alejandra Valencia received the baton from Aida Roman.

The Santiago 2023 Pan American Games were trailblazer Roman’s final competition in Mexico’s green – three months after fellow Olympic medallist Mariana Avitia had bowed out at the Paris 2023 Hyundai Archery World Cup stage 4 stage.

Both their names will live long in Mexican archery history as the nation’s first Olympic medallists: Roman winning silver and Avitia bronze at London 2012.

True national icons, they symbolised a golden generation. It felt fitting that the flame of Mexico’s recurve women’s team was passed on in Santiago. Roman failed to qualify for the 32-cut, while her younger compatriot Valencia went all the way to gold that day.

Valencia’s conquest in Chile capped her most impressive season yet: victory at the Central American and Caribbean Games, silver at the Hyundai World Archery Championships in Berlin, and then another silver at the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in her hometown of Hermosillo.

Roman’s decision to retire made sense. Valencia’s quality signalled that the team was – and still is – in good hands, a statement backed up by Mexico’s women’s team bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

“They are the heroes of Mexico and that helps to make archery again a priority sport and archery again in the media in Mexico,” said World Archery Mexico president Gabriel Ramos in April, speaking after the podium at Les Invalides.

This might suggest there’s nothing unusual about one apprentice filling a master’s shoes. After all, national trials, injuries and life changes mean archers come and go.

But the last two years have felt different for Valencia. She grew up alongside Roman and Avitia, having looked up to them since her international debut in 2010 – then just 15 years old – when she claimed her first team medal with them (silver at the Central American and Caribbean Games). Together, they travelled the world, shared hotel rooms, shot at her maiden Olympics and, ultimately, grew as friends and teammates.

Now, Valencia was Roman in Paris 2024: the experienced captain. She will lead once again in Gwangju, spearheading a team of Karime Montoya Alfaro, 17, and Valentina Vazquez, 22. And she is expected to do the same at LA28 – which could be her own Olympic swansong.

“She’s the strong one on the team, supporting and lending her experience to the other athletes,” Ramos added. “We have a separate plan. We have one plan for Alejandra because Alejandra is a big star in a different moment of her life.

“She’s an adult, she’s not an archer who can be all the time in the national training facility. We need something different for her.”

With Roman seven years older, the two were always at different stages of life. Now, eight years older than Vazquez and 13 years senior to Alfaro, Valencia, at 30, finds herself in the same position – only on the other side of the equation.

Away from the shooting line, Valencia looks happier than ever.

“I can’t believe how fast these months went by,” she wrote in a recent Instagram post celebrating her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend.

And she doesn’t seem to mind the leadership role either. Since Roman and Avitia retired, Valencia has won triple silver at the 2024 Pan American Championships, gold at the 2025 Copa Merengue, six World Cup medals – including bronze at the Tlaxcala Final – and that all-important Olympic bronze.

We have seen how she has grown incrementally since Roman and Avitia made history in London. To inspire her much younger teammates in Gwangju – and perhaps become the first-ever Mexican to become a World Archery Champion – would be another major step forward, for both them and archery in Mexico.

She was so close in Berlin, undone only by the best version of Czechia’s Marie Horackova we have ever seen.

Roman was still captain of the ship then. Now Valencia is at the wheel, in stature as much as in quality.

It’s her turn to show the upcoming generation how it’s done.