World Archery Athlete of the Year 2015 results: Recurve women

Ki Bo Bae collected the recurve women’s World Archery Athlete of the Year 2015 Award at the World Archery Gala in Las Vegas on Friday 29 January 2016. She was voted top of a five-athlete shortlist by the general public and World Archery’s awards panel. The shortlist was proposed by national archery federations and archery experts.

Here are the full results…

1. Ki Bo Bae  – 35%

Ki Bo Bae became an Olympic Champion and a World Cup Final winner in 2012. Two years later, in 2014, she was off the Korean team and commentating on national television. In 2015, back on the team and back to form, she opened the season with a bronze in Shanghai and a silver in Antalya.

At the 2015 Universiade in Gwangju – on home soil in Korea, she claimed gold and shot 686 points during qualification to break the decade-old 72-arrow ranking round world record, by four points.

Three months later, at the World Archery Championships in Copenhagen, Ki Bo Bae became World Champion to add a coveted world title to her long list of achievements. She qualified second for the 2015 Archery World Cup Final in Mexico City and finished seventh.

2. Deepika Kumari  – 18%

Deepika, who competed in three out of four stages of the 2015 Archery World Cup circuit, had a silver season. After starting with bronze in Antalya, she collected silver in the mixed team in Wroclaw and in the recurve women’s team in Copenhagen.

A three-time Archery World Cup Final silver medalist, Deepika qualified for her fifth Final in Mexico City expecting to win the elusive gold – a dream that was ended by Choi Misun, who beat her by 6:2. Another silver medal: Deepika’s fourth at the event!

3. Mackenzie Brown  – 16%

USA Olympic hopeful Mackenzie Brown was still a junior in 2015. Finishing 57th and 17th in Shanghai and Antalya, respectively, Mackenzie’s season didn’t start all that well.

Things changed at the 2015 Youth World Championships in Yankton, where she won silver. Later in Wroclaw, she won gold in both individual and recurve women’s team – the USA recurve women team’s first such win on the Archery World Cup tour, ever. They then collected Medellin’s bronze, while Mackenzie qualified for her first Archery World Cup final, where she finished fourth.

Continuing her strong run of performances since Wroclaw, Mackenzie took bronze at the Olympic test event.

4. Choi Misun  – 16%

In 2015, Choi Misun had an international debut career that any archer would like. In both Shanghai and Antalya, the only two stages of the World Cup season that the Korean A-team competed at, she won a total of three gold and two silver medals.

At the Universiade in Gwangju, she lost to teammate Ki Bo Bae to take silver – adding another second-place with the recurve women’s squad.

During the Worlds in Copenhagen, she finished third and, later on in Rio, she won the 2015 Olympic Test Event. To finish her impressive debut season, Misun qualified top for her first ever Archery World Cup Final - a place she never dropped out of, to became the 2015 World Cup Final Champion.

5. Karina Winter  – 12%  

Throughout the year, Karina had eight top-10 finishes at Archery World Cup stages in 2015 (in individual, mixed team and team competition). During the World Championships in Copenhagen, she won the German women’s only quota place to Rio 2016 – a result that complemented the biggest achievement of her year: Gold at the first edition of the European Games in Baku.