Chinese youth archers gain indoor experience at 2026 Swiss Open
The youngest athletes at the Swiss Open Lausanne 2026 have travelled the furthest. A small delegation from China’s Jingshe Archery Club arrived at the World Archery Excellence Centre days before the competition for specialised indoor training with coach Bernardo Oliveira.
They brought with them the strong archery pedigree of their hometown, Qingdao. Founded more than a decade ago by retired recurve archer Amy Li, Jingshe Club has grown into China’s largest archery club, with more than 200 registered archers and active grassroots training programmes in local schools.
Qingdao itself is no stranger to top archery talent. The coastal city has produced many leading Chinese archers, most famously Zhang Juan Juan, who became Olympic Champion at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games – the only non-Korean woman to win Olympic gold in the past four decades.
More recently, Wang Dapeng – who medalled on the World Cup circuit and represented China at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 – also hailed from Qingdao.
“Our city is famous for archery, for shooting,” team manager Eric Li explained. “We train and cultivate a lot of national champions. I think maybe more than 80% of the champions are from our city.”
While the national team trains in Beijing and on Hainan Island, sometimes called ‘China’s Hawaii’, Qingdao remains a centre of Chinese archery.
The club initially planned to bring a group of at least 10 archers, but last-minute cancellations by several parents reduced the delegation to three young athletes: 12-year-old Chen Zhonghan, and Jia Yinru and Zhang Xinyi, both 13.
For the trio, the Swiss Open marks both their international debut and their first major experience of indoor competition.
“We mostly shoot outdoors, so we are not that familiar with the procedures, the steps,” said Li.
To bridge the gap, the squad spent their first two days completing eight hours of intensive coaching with Bernardo, working on posture, bow tuning and simulated tournament ends to help them understand the scoring process.
The sessions also introduced the young archers to balance pads to refine their shooting posture. Bernardo used the pads to help keep one archer’s hips anchored and prevent another from letting her shoulder creep forward during the shot.
“Because they came right before a competition, that puts us in a somewhat limited position in terms of technique work,” said Bernardo. “We’re not going to reinvent their technique and risk lower scores. At the World Archery Excellence Centre, posture and balance are foundational areas we can work on with almost anyone.”
“The balance pads we use are just a little bit unstable, so they instinctively force the archer to be more stable and to use their body and core muscles a little bit more,” he added.
Competing in the under-21 category, 12-year-old Chen ‘Harry’ Zhonghan delivered an impressive qualification score of 549, averaging 9.15 points per arrow.
Ambitions remain high, and Chen’s long-term goal is to win Olympic gold. For this trip, however, the team’s immediate priority was simply to explore the Swiss Alps.
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