Leipzig “LIVE” – Team Recurve Finals Matches

The teams shot their final matches today. After the Compound categories this morning, the Recurve Women and Men’s teams followed in the afternoon with their semi-finals and Bronze/Gold medal matches.   RECURVE WOMEN Semi-final: Korea (seed 1) – Great Britain (seed 4)
Korea led Great Britain by one point after the first end of the match (54-53). No change in the second with the British still trailing by one (105-104). With six arrows to go for each team, the Koreans were led their opponents by two points 162-160. At the end, it was a 3-point victory for Choi, Lee and Park over Burgess, Folkard and Williamson with a final score of 216-213. Semi-final: Italy (6) – Chinese Taipei (7) Chinese Taipei increased their first end, 1-point advantage (53-52) to a 2-point lead half-way (107-105). The Asian ladies increased their advantage to 164-158 with only six arrows left in this match. The Italians could not recover from this 6-point deficit and watched their opponents meet Korea in the gold final. Final score of this second semi-final: 215-212.     Bronze Medal: Great Britain (4) - Italy (6) Great Britain versus Italy shooting for the World Championships bronze medal! Valeeva, Tonetta and Lionetti opened with 8-8-9 (25), while Folkard, Williamson and Burgess started with 8-10-9 (27). Great Britain led Italy after three arrows. The first end finished with an 8-9-9 for the Italians, whereas the British shot 8-10-9 to take a 3-point advantage (54-51). Taking advantage of a 7 by the British Burgess, Italy came back in the second end and tied the match at the half-way mark (105-105). A better performance by Italy (10-7-8-9-10-9), but not enough to stay level with Great-Britain (10-9-10-9-9-8) after the third end: the British led by two points (160-158) at that point. With their last six arrows, Valeeva and team-mates scored 8-8-10-8-9-9, too many 8s for them to hope to win this bronze medal match. Great Britain finished the match shooting 9-9-10-9-10-6 and clinched victory by 213-210.     Gold Medal: Korea (1) - Chinese Taipei (7) Lee and Choi started with two perfect 10s, followed with an 8 by Park. It was 28 for Korea after the first three arrows. The ladies from Chinese Taipei, Yuan Shen and Wu opened up their match with 10-8-7. With a score of 25 they trailed by three points. Olympic Champion Park and team-mates closed the first end with 10-9-10 and an intermediate total of 57. Chinese Taipei scored 10-8-10 but was behind on 53. Led by Lee with four 10s so far, the Koreans increased their lead by four points shooting 10-9-9-10-10-9 (114). Although their top archer Yuan also scored four 10s with her first four arrows, the team of Chinese Taipei had a total of 108 at the half-way mark. The margin kept increasing for Korea: 169-163 after they shot 10-9-9-9-9-9 (10-8-9-10-9-9 for Chinese Taipei in this end). With a six point disadvantage and nothing to lose, Yuan and her team-mates shot an amazing 10-10-10 series with three arrows to go. At that point Korea could control the match with a 9-9-10. Chinese Taipei finished with 10-9-9 and 212 points. It is worth noting that in this match their first archer Yuan shot eight 10s with her eight arrows! Unfortunately for her, she could not prevent her team from losing the match, leaving the defending champions win another World title! Korea finished with10-10-9 and a total of 226.       RECURVE MEN Semi-final: Korea (1) – Chinese Taipei (4) A 100% Asian duel between Korea and Chinese Taipei for this first semi-final in Recurve Men. The no. 4 seeded team of Chinese Taipei was only one point behind the favourite Koreans after the first end: 58-57. Half-way through Korea had increased its lead to three points (115-112). The Koreans just shoot on a different planet… they reached 172 points (out of a possible 180) after three ends in their first match of the afternoon. They were thus leading their opponents by ten points. Korea could maintain the same intense pace and not only qualified for the gold final match, but even set a new World Record at 231 points (the previous record was 229 by China in 2006). Although shooting the second best score in the semi-finals (220), Chinese Taipei would be shooting for bronze.       Semi-final: Poland (11) – Great Britain (2) The second semi-final match was an all European affair between Poland and Great Britain. The British took the lead in this duel after six arrows by 53-52. The Polish suffered from a very low second end and trailed by four points at that time (109-105). With only six arrows remaining, Great Britain kept a comfortable 3-point lead at 160-157. Their Polish opponents lost a few additional points to finish five points behind: 216-211. Great Britain to face Korea for gold later on!     Bronze Medal: Chinese Taipei (4) - Poland (11) Kuo, Liu and Wang of Chinese Taipei faced Piatek, Proc and Dobrowolski from Poland. After being tied after three arrows both with 9-8-9, the Polish archers released 10-8-10 to take a slim lead over their opponents (54-53). Chinese Taipei started their next end with 7-10-9, but followed this with a perfect 10-10-10 series to score an intermediate total of 109. At this critical moment of the match, Poland seemed to suffer from pressure and scored 10-9-7-7-9-9. They were behind by four points with 105. In the third end, they came round a little shooting 9-8-8-9-9-10 (158), but their opponents had found their pace and continued shooting tremendously: 10-10-9-10-9-10 (167). With a 9-point disadvantage, the Polish still had a lot of hard work ahead of them to come back! Piatek and his fellow countrymen finished on a superb 57 end (10-8-10-9-10-10) and a total of 215 points but this was not enough to take bronze and Chinese Taipei won this duel on 218 points.     Gold Medal: Korea (1) – Greart Britain (2) The male Korean team hoped to copy their female counterparts who had just won the gold medal but commencing their final with Great Britain with 8-10-8 was maybe not the best way to do it. On 26 they trailed by one point with the British scoring 27 on their first three arrows (9-8-10). Im, Lee and Kim, however, continued with 9-10-10 (55) and took the lead back from Great-Britain (9-9-9/54) after the first end. The Koreans profited from a 7 by Godfrey at the end of the second series to increase their lead to five points: 112-107. Led by 1992 Olympic Bronze medallist Terry, the British scored 10-9-9-8-9-19 for an intermediate total of 162 but the no. 1 Korean team did not make any concessions and held a 4-point lead with six arrows left in this last team match (166). The last end would not change anything, Korea adding another World Championship title to its already long record of victories. With 10-10-9-10-10, the Koreans had clinched the gold medal before the last arrow was shot by Kim (9). Final score: 224-214.       FITA Communication