Taylor Worth: Tokyo preparation started the day Rio Olympics ended

Taylor Worth has dedicated almost 20 years of his life to archery.

The 28-year-old was a bronze medallist with the Australian recurve men’s team at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and has been shooting the Hyundai Archery World Cup circuit for nearly a decade.

But it was 2018 when he finally broke onto the individual podium and found himself ranked among the top 10 recurve men in the world.

After taking individual bronze at the World Archery Indoor Championships, he secured another third-place finish at the last stage of the Hyundai Archery World Cup in Berlin.

That bronze medal, with a seventh from Shanghai and 17th in Salt Lake City, was enough to secure him a place at the 2018 Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in Samsun, Turkey.

It meant Taylor had to postpone his honeymoon – but it was worth it, as he finished fourth at the circuit-ending event, losing a bronze-medal shoot-off to Brady Ellison.

“The season was the best of my career so far and I will continue to push to make the 2019 season just as good,” said Worth.

“Looking back there are always more things I could have done but I am working with my support network to make them stronger.”

Archers from Australia rarely shoot the indoor circuit – and Taylor’s been taking the time to fully focus on the upcoming world championships.

“Throughout the off-season, I’ve been working on a few of my bad habits and I’m looking to push through those barriers and see what else I can accomplish and see how high I can go,” he said.

Perhaps even more than fighting for world medals, it’s the places for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games that will be forefront in ’s-Hertogenbosch. The 2019 Hyundai World Archery Championships act as the main qualifier for the Games.

It’s a critical event for every country’s high-performance recurve programme.

“Tokyo isn’t too far away now, and I think we are building a strong team from the ground up with our coaching and support staff to give Australia the best chance to get back on the podium,” said Worth.

“But the road to the Olympics doesn’t begin in mid-2020, it began the day Rio was over.”

Everything the Australian team does, explained Taylor, is with Tokyo in mind. From the competitions on the calendar to the training regimes, it’s all aligned with the Olympic cycle.

Well, perhaps not everything. There’s Taylor the athlete and also Taylor the married man:

“We are expecting our first child in May this year, so that’s pretty exciting.”

Preliminary entries for the ’s-Hertogenbosch 2019 Hyundai World Archery Championships numbered 617 athletes from 86 countries.