Quotes of Team Eliminations

 
Recurve Men  Thomas AUBERT (FRA) I was very pleased with my performance in the individual matches yesterday. It was a long time that I hadn’t reached an individual final match at a World Cup. Today I was the first supporter of the team! Although we all ranked pretty high in qualifications, I was the 4th Frenchman. So my teammates truly deserved to be in the team today and once again they did well reaching the gold final. Although the composition of the team has changed a little every, we have been on international podiums consistently for the last four years. We have some young and talented archers, including Thomas FAUCHERON who is making his debut this week. I really hope we win gold tomorrow. That would give us one more boost for our ultimate goal: a medal at the Olympic Games.   Recurve Women   Khatuna LORIG (USA) – who taught archery to Jennifer LAWRENCE, the actress who plays the main character Katniss in the new Hollywood blockbuster “Hunger Games” It was a great experience and a lot of fun to teach archery to Jennifer. I think she shot well in the movie. I liked it. The story is actually based on a trilogy (books), so more movies should come up and I hope to have the chance to work with Jennifer again.   About today’s competition—it is OK. We qualified for the mixed team’s bronze medal match with Brady ELLISON who is shooting really well. In the team event, we lost against to the No. 1 seed Korea in the quarter-finals. I would say the team is still a work in progress. We need to reach our best for the Ogden World Cup Stage in June and win a team spot for the Olympic Games. If not, we will only have one woman archer in London and the battle in the trials will be tough—although all is still open. We will shoot our second trials soon. I really hope we qualify a full team and I hope to compete in London for my fifth Olympics.   Catch Khatuna LORIG’s full interview on www.archery.tv soon.   Natalie DIELEN (SUI) We lost in the first round against Korea but we played a good match. Except for a couple of bad arrows, we were in “our zone” of points. We are now regularly scoring around 205 points, which is in line with what the Swiss Olympic Committee is asking as a performance. If I look at the scores of the others countries who will fight in Ogden for a team place at the Games, I see that we are close to one another. Of course, we need to raise our level through the season and score some more points in June!   Coaches   Teruo SHINKAI (JPN) I'm very happy with the result that our recurve mixed team achieved. We were seeded 16th and we had to face the stronger Koreans at the very beginning.   My athletes realised that they could win the match and my main duty was to encourage them.   After the first match they only had to continue on their way and try not to loose concentration because of other team cheering. At the end they did it and they will shoot for gold medal on Saturday morning. I'm very proud of them!   Ryszard PACURA (POL) We have a new team composition in recurve women and this is the first time they attend a top level event. We did a good job, the team achieved a higher score than our expectations and they work very well together.   We couldn't have a better feedback from this World Cup leg and it makes us optimistic for the rest of the season.   Badamkhatan TSOGT (MGL) Thanks to World Archery we were able to stay for two months at the training centre in Bangkok. There we were able to start practising outdoor earlier than in our land and we could achieve good results from the very first event.   Moreover, we were in Bangkok for the Asian Grand Prix so we had a chance to check our preparation against other teams early in February. So far we have two Olympic quotas, one man and one woman, but our aim is to get a team quota next June in Ogden.   Boris ISACHENKO (BLR) We are looking forward to Ogden: our main goal is to get an Olympic place for the team, at least for our women's team.   The first seasonal event, for us, is always a problem because of the length of the winter in Belarus. We can train outdoor very few days before the first important international event so we have to focus on the following ones.   This year Antalya will be very important for us since we will choose there both our teams for the European Championships in Amsterdam.   World Archery Communication