Chinese youth talent gaining 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 ahead of competition for specialised indoor training with coach Bernardo Oliveira.
They brought with them the formidable archery pedigree of their hometown of Qingdao. Founded over a decade ago by retired recurve athlete Amy Li, Jingshe Club has expanded into China’s largest archery club, boasting over 200 registered archers and with active grassroots training pipelines in local schools.
Qingdao itself is no stranger to top archery talent. The coastal city has cultivated many top 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 last four decades.
More recently, Wang Dapeng – who medalled on the World Cup circuit and represented China at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 – also hails from Qingdao.
“Our city is famous for archery, for shooting,” team manager Eric Li explained. “We train and we cultivate a lot of national champions. I think maybe over 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 the cauldron of Chinese archery.
The club initially planned to bring a travel party of at least ten archers, but last-minute cancellations from several parents reduced the roster to three young athletes: 12-year-old Zhonghan Chen, alongside Jia Yinru and Zhang Xinyi, both 13.
For the trio, the Swiss Open marks both their international debut and their first major initiation to the indoor stage. “We mostly shoot outdoors,” said Li. “So we are not that familiar with the procedures, the steps.”
To bridge the gap, the squad spent their first two days logging eight hours of intensive coaching with Bernardo working on posture, bow tuning, and simulated tournament ends to understand scoring.
The sessions also introduced the young archers to balance pads to refine their shooting posture under pressure. Bernardo used the pads to keep one archer’s hips anchored and to stop another from letting her shoulder creep forward through the shot.
“Because they came right before a competition that gives us that puts us in somewhat in a limited place in terms of technique work, we're not going to reinvent their technique and risk lower scores. At the World Archery Excellence Centre, posture and balance are foundational, they are areas we can work on with almost anyone,” said Bernado.
“The balance pads we use are just a little bit unstable, so it kind of instinctively forces the archer to be more stable and to and to use their body, their core muscles a little bit more,” he added.
In the under-21 category, 12-year-old Zhonghan 'Harry' Chen delivered an impressive qualification score of 549, averaging 9.15 per arrow.
Ambition remains high, and Chen’s long-term goal is an Olympic gold medal – though for the trip itself, the team's immediate priority was simply exploring the Swiss Alps.
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