News

Sebastian takes maiden title at 2025 Archery Open as France take three medals

7 December 2025

Taoyuan City, Chinese Taipei

Real name:

France‘s Victoria Sebastian took her first senior title, winning the recurve women‘s competition at the Taipei Archery Open on Sunday 7 December by beating Korea‘s Lee Eunah 7-1.

”I was pretty calm, I knew I just had to play my game, so it was pretty nice. Now I have more experience, so I was very cool. I was very motivated, but cool.” said the 21-year-old.

Sebastian, who also beat reigning World Champion Kang Chaeyoung and team Youth World Champion Han Sol on the way to the final, indeed stayed extremely cool, calmly delivering four ends of 29 for victory, while Lee never really found full fluency on the stage.

She also achieved the win despite an airline mishap that saw her bow arrive just thirty minutes before the start of qualification on Friday.

Sebastian will next compete in her hometown: Nimes. ”It’s the first time I’ve won a tournament. I’ve been on the podium, but I’d never won a tournament, so this is something I’m very happy about,” she said.

The host nation got something to cheer about when Chinese Taipei’s Su Yu-Yang took the recurve men’s title, beating France’s Jean-Charles Valladont in a shoot-off.

The Rio 2016 Olympic medallist sent down eleven tens from the off and looked to be cruising to victory, but then wobbled in the last two ends as Su went clean to force the shoot-off. The Frenchman shot first, but his nine was easily beaten by Su.

It was Su’s maiden title but his third time on the Taipei stage; he took individual silver in 2022 and a bronze in 2024.

Valladont’s silver meant that all three of the travelling French contingent took a medal home, with Baptiste Addis grabbing recurve men’s bronze from Korea’s Heo Jaewoo.

Earlier, Croatia’s Amanda Mlinaric took compound women’s gold, edging out Korea‘s Yu Heeyeon 146-145. It was Mlinaric’s second title of the year after winning the European Field Championships in September.

Mike Schloesser then won compound men’s gold with an imperious finals performance of 150 to shut out Korea’s veteran Choi Yonghee, who never looked entirely comfortable on the stage.

It was a successful defence of the title he won last year and his third title overall after winning at the debut edition in 2022. It caps a strong year for Schloesser, who also took two World Cup stages and the World Games title – as well as becoming a father.

He also achieved this while suffering from jet lag, quipping “A six-month-old handles jet lag worse than I do — the last few nights were rough.”

While the Korean contingent cleaned up in the junior categories, winning six of the eight finals, they had a disastrous senior finals day, where Korean athletes managed to lose every match they contested.

The indoor action now immediately swings to South America with the Rio Indoor 250 from the 12-14 December, followed by the Nimes Archery Tournament in the new year.

You can rewatch live coverage of the Taipei finals with a subscription to archery+.