Hot start in Shanghai

   Hot and humid weather greeted the archers this morning in the Yuan Shen Stadium. The athletes expected a long and hard day of shooting, but some of them kept only one thing in mind: qualify for the World Cup Final in Copenhagen!   Recurve Men The ranking after the first distance—90 metres—was tight at the top. LEE Chang-Hwan (KOR) had 322 points, while OH Jin-Hyek (KOR) and CHEN Wenyuan (CHN) achieved 321. They built a small lead on Jayanta TALUKDAR (IND) who shot 315.   OH was the best at 70 metres with 342 points and had the lead at the midday break with an intermediate total of 663. LEE followed closely with 339 and a total of 661. CHEN was only 13th at 70 metres with 330 points but kept his 3rd place overall with 651. TALUKDAR had 648, CHENG Chu Sian (MAS) 647, and Jean-Charles VALLADONT (FRA) 641.   The positions were almost set after the third distance. OH was still ahead shooting the best 50m score of 344 points which added up to 1007 points. LEE and CHEN followed with 992 and 983 points, respectively. The Australian Matthew GRAY shot the second best 50m score of 339 points which took him up to 4th place. CHENG, Luis E. VELEZ SANCHEZ, and IM Dong-Hyun, who also shot an excellent 50m, followed.   In the last distance, the top three did not change. CHENG and VELEZ SANCHEZ passed GRAY, who only shot 351 points and the rest did not change much either with IM, GIROUILLE, VALLADONT and TALUKDAR making the top 10.   On the team's side, Korea had 1959 points at the halfway mark. India followed on 1909 ahead of China with 1902 and France with 1899. After the second half, Korea still led with 4044 points. France shot much better and got to 2nd place on 3953 points. Then came India, Japan and China.  Compound Women Albina LOGINOVA (RUS) was the best at the longest distance—70 metres for the women. She had 347 points, ahead of her young teammate Viktoria BALZHANOVA (RUS) with 345 and Camilla SOEMOD (DEN) with 344.   SOEMOD was only 5th at 60 metres with 345 points but her consistency paid off. She led at lunch time with a total of 689 points. Despite a 10th rank at 60m with 341 points, LOGINOVA was 2nd with 688. Linda OCHOA (MEX) scored 343 points twice this morning and was 3rd with 686. Ivana BUDEN (CRO) was the best at 60m with 347 points and ranked 4th with 684.   OCHOA scored best at 50m with 349 points and took the lead having a total of 1035 points. LOGINOVA stayed in the second place on 1031 points. Nicky HUNT (GBR) photo shot very well and took 3rd place with 1030 points. Anastasia ANASTASIO and Ivana BUDEN followed in 4th and 5th places. The surprise came from SOEMOD who did not shoot so well and dropped from 1st to 6th place.   The fourth distance saw no change at all in the top six as they all shot close to perfect scores, so at the end we had OCHOA with 1391 points, LOGINOVA with 1389 points and HUNT with 1388 points in the top three positions. Then came ANASTASIO, BUDEN, SOEMOD, BALZHANOVA, Pascale LEBECQUE (FRA), Sophia GONCHAROVA (RUS) and Luzmary GUEDEZ (VEN).   At noon, Mexico led the team's ranking with 2034 ahead of Russia (2026) and France (2020). The second half saw no difference in the team's positions, so we had Mexico 1st with 4104 points, Russia 2nd with 4082 and France 3rd with 4071.   Didier MIEVILLE FITA Communication