Penny Healey returns from injury aiming to make up for Gwangju miss

“A bad day doesn’t define me anymore,” said Penny Healey when asked about the biggest difference between herself and the archer she was at the 2023 Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in Hermosillo.

That was the last time the British recurve archer appeared at the season-ending event – but mentally, she says, the difference between then and now in Nanjing is night and day.

It follows the heartbreak of missing the Gwangju 2025 Hyundai World Archery Championships due to a tear in her superior labrum – discovered just one week before recurve qualification began.

“I didn’t take it very well, I’ll be honest,” said the 2023 European Games Champion. “I struggle a bit with mental health anyway, so it didn’t really help.”

“But I was really happy to see some of my teammates, who I knew on the team, go out there and perform the best they could. I was really proud of everybody who was out there.”

“I didn’t really watch, but I was messaging a lot of my teammates the whole time just to check up on them and see if they needed anything.”

Seventeen-year-old Paris 2024 Olympian Megan Havers took Healey’s place in Gwangju – a familiar situation for the now 20-year-old, who also burst onto the international scene as a teenager.

She announced herself as a major prospect in early 2022, stunning the field with bronze at The Vegas Shoot and then gold at the Indoor World Series Finals – all at just 16 years old.

That week in Las Vegas changed Healey’s life forever.

It made her a superstar in the sport almost overnight, just four events into her international career – a dream debut by any standard.

But the Central Florida gold medallist – who secured her ticket to Nanjing by winning the first stage of the 2025 World Cup – has admitted in the past how much the pressure of early success affected her, including during the Paris 2024 Olympic Game.

“I’ve worked a lot on myself the past year or two, and I think I’m mentally stronger to be out here. [There’s been] just a lot more psych work,” she said.

“Obviously, I was an 18-year-old [in Hermosillo 2023], so I wasn’t going to be great with the psych side of things in archery. I’m privileged to have the people to do that.”

“I’d have a bad shot and be like, ‘I think the world’s ending,’ but now I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s fine, just move on.’”

Should she make it all the way at the Nanjing Olympic Museum on Sunday, Healey will first have to get past Casey Kaufhold, then either Hsu Hsin-tzu or defending World Cup Champion Li Jiaman, before a possible gold medal match against one of Kang Chaeyoung, Zhu Jingyi, An San or Michelle Kroppen.

Based on her 2025 results so far, there’s good reason to believe the Brit can overcome every obstacle in China.

In addition to her Florida win, Healey also claimed titles at the Arnhem 2025 European Grand Prix and the Nimes Archery Tournament earlier this year – a stellar 10 months by any measure.

Some might wonder whether the shoulder issue could still trouble her in Nanjing, but Healey says she is no longer in pain thanks to targeted physiotherapy.

“I’ve been struggling with tendinopathy,” she explained. “I remember shooting one day and thinking, ‘That doesn’t feel right,’ and then I took another shot and was just in a lot of pain.”

“I feel so privileged to have had the right people helping me to get to where I am right now, so thank you to everybody who’s supported me.”

Even after such a setback, Healey’s journey has already been one of highs and lows – but heading into Nanjing, she seems to be in the best place possible to take on the world once again.