World Champion Hansen adds World Games crown

Twenty-two year old Danish archer and reigning World Archery Champion Stephan Hansen beat Esmaeil Ebadi from Iran to the compound men’s gold medal at the 2017 World Games, Poland, becoming the first person to hold both titles at the same time.

“I didn’t feel good. I was nervous, I didn’t control myself and I was doing most of it wrong. I don’t even know how I shot the middle sometimes. I even shot my last arrow with a back tension [release aid] because I knew I just needed to hit the target to win,” said Hansen, who changed to a trigger before the start of the season.

“I think I’m going to shoot more back tension now. My problem is that I can’t control a trigger and I end up doing silly mistakes. Anyway, I’m happy about winning today.”

Hansen shook his head on the finals field as he was being announced as the winner.

The world number one said he learned a lot from the experience and had a plan for practice ahead of stage four of the 2017 Hyundai Archery World Cup in Berlin, Germany in one week’s time.

“Today I felt it wasn’t my day but I won, so I guess it wasn’t too bad,” he added.

Asian Games Champion Esmaeil Ebadi had silver, while Croatia’s Domagoj Buden took a bronze medal match victory over Peter Elzinga from the Netherlands by three points, 144-141.

The compound target archery competitions at the 2017 World Games run 29/30 July in Wroclaw, Poland.