NEMATI sets new para record as rookie Korean wins top women’s seed

It was always likely to be a Korean name in first place in the women’s recurve qualification – but which one? 

It took the full 72 arrows to decide it, but KANG Chae Young was finally victorious. At just 19 years old, she shot 677 to top the field of 109 recurve women at the Shanghai Archery World Cup stage, over six points clear of her teammate and fellow new girl to the Korean team, CHOI Misun.

How do you feel about such an amazing result at your first World Cup? “I feel… nervous, really. I don’t know what to say!” 

KANG won a team gold at the World Archery Youth Championships as a cadet back in 2011, but making it into the senior Korean team involves negotiating no less than three multi-day selection tournaments, a notoriously demanding process which KANG said she found incredibly stressful.

“I’m just glad it’s over. I don’t really know how I made it through,” she admitted. “I can take the shot really quick so I don’t lose energy, but I suppose what got me through is my concentration.” 

As for what she would like to achieve in Shanghai: “I would of course like to get the gold medal in the team match. As for the individual competition… I would just like to do my best!”

The Korean women’s team, which features no returning members of the Archery World Cup squad of 2014, was not as dominant as their male counterparts – who took seeds one to four over their ranking round. 

Returning star and reigning Olympic Champion KI Bo Bae was fifth and CHANG Hye Jin finished 12th. Experienced archers Kaori KAWANAKA of Japan and Inna STEPANOVA of Russia took third and fourth. 

Zahra NEHMATI, the Paralympic Champion archer – who collected gold at London 2012 and at last year’s Asian Para Games – from Iran was perhaps the women’s biggest achiever, though.

She set a new world record of 657 in the para archery recurve open category at her first ever Archery World Cup.

It collected her the 12th seed, too: A surefire win for a large Iranian contingent at this Asian stage of the international archery circuit.

“I was just very strong today,” said Zahra. “Self-confidence is probably my strongest asset as an archer. But I just came to Shanghai for a good experience, really.”

That’s quite some experience. 

India’s own superstar Deepika KUMARI finished 13th, drawn with Zahra on 657 points.

“I didn’t think it was very good today, but I’m happy. I’ll take it. The conditions were okay if a little cold for me.”

Despite winning the last stage of the season as a team, the Indian recurve women’s trio missed even the cut to eliminations in Shanghai this year: “I’m just going to give my best,” said a stoic Deepika.

Despite Ana RENDON’s eighth-place finish, the Colombian women also finished qualification down the ranking – as did the Brazilians, well on the home straight towards preparation for their home Olympic Games.

Read more about Shanghai 2015.