News

Korean recurve women set up rematch with China on home soil

23 May 2024

Yecheon, Korea

Real name:

China and Korea recurve women reaching gold medal match in Yecheon.

A rematch in the recurve women’s team event is set to take place at the second stage of the Hyundai Archery World Cup 2024 in Yecheon.

China and Korea played out a tantalising gold medal match in the season opener in Shanghai last month with the former pulling off a huge upset against the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games champions.

The teams were also the top two qualification seeds and swept through the competition giving home country Korea the chance for revenge.

Li Jiaman however stated that it wasn’t all plain sailing for the Chinese team.

“At the beginning it was not very smooth, then there were a lot of difficult matches,” the 26-year-old said. “I think we were well prepared for the clear difficulties.”

“Then we were also very prepared for the opponent to do very well. We had to pay attention to our learning and preparation. It’s all ready.”

“I always have a lot of confidence in myself,” the steely Li replied, when asked how her team will fare against Korea once again.

Germany’s recurve women beat Indonesia for bronze, and the country already secured a second medal as the men’s will shoot for gold on Sunday in Yecheon, where they will face host Korea.

Kim Woojin continued his fine form in 2024, dropping just one point in the eliminations.

Although this World Cup is important, he revealed his sights are now firmly on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games this summer.

“My final goal is the Paris Olympics and I think this World Cup is my opportunity to work on things to be improved. I feel satisfied with today’s result.”

Korea will face a team that includes Olympian and Krakow-Malopolska 2023 European Games gold medallist, Florian Unruh.

They finished ninth in Shanghai, but Unruh explained what was different for Germany in Yecheon.

“I think we all shot better individual scores and worked good as a team,” said the newly-crowned European mixed team champion.

“The wind was a little bit tricky today, not as tricky as yesterday but enough to aim off a little bit and our communication was good about where we aimed off.”

Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist Mauro Nespoli in contrast was sombre after Italy lost the men’s bronze medal match. He felt the recent Essen 2024 European Archery Championships had a part to play.

“In the qualifications for the Olympic Games, I spent a lot of energy, now I need to reserve my mind and I’m working on it, so I’ll be ready for the Olympics.”

They were rocked by a new look Canada side that included Berlin 2023 Hyundai World Archery Championships silver medallist Eric Peters.

Canada wins recurve men’s team bronze in Yecheon 2024.

The inexperienced Reece Wilson-Poyton and Brandon Xuereb really impressed, having never been in any international medal match of this magnitude.

A delighted Wilson-Poyton felt his side’s underdog status gave the Canadians an edge.

“We knew we were the underdogs, our sports psychologist told us that’s the attitude we had to have,” the 24-year-old said. “We had nothing to lose, went all in for every arrow and didn’t look back.”

“We had good timing on all the shots,” added teammate Xuereb.

Germany’s recurve women’s team were also well pleased, beating Indonesia in another World Cup rematch to win the same bronze they did in Shanghai.

They may have missed out on an improved gold or silver but Olympic bronze medallist Michelle Kroppen, who came in for Charline Schwarz, described what it meant to her team.

“We were celebrating a lot because we were really fighting today. No matter what happened, if we had a bad arrow or lost a set we were always coming back.”

“We were communicating a lot about the wind changes and maybe this was the one all step that was better [than Indonesia] to win the medal,” Kroppen added.

Recurve finals take place on Sunday at the Jinho International Archery Field.

Competition continues with compound individual eliminations on Thursday afternoon.