Canada’s Austin Taylor makes gold medal match at world youth championships

Austin Taylor, 19, will shoot for Canada’s first title at the World Archery Youth Championships since Doris Jones won compound junior women’s gold in Merida in 2006.

Taylor seeded sixth in Madrid.

He showed nerves of steel in his first match after both he and Jagdeep Singh of Colombia shot 145 points for the 15-arrow 50-metre match. A shoot-off was needed and the Canadian archer put his arrow into the X.

Austin then beat Turkey’s Emircan Haney, German archer Paolo Kunsch and Rodrigo Olvera of Mexico with scores of 145, 146 and 146 points.

It sets up a gold medal match against Anders Faugstad on Saturday.

“I am absolutely pumped, that's what I was looking for over the last few years. I’m definitely excited,” said Taylor.

“The competition level is so high that you can’t expect to get into the gold medal match but I definitely knew that if I stuck to the game plan, I had chances to do that.”

The compound bow has brought the majority of previous successes for Canadian archery.

Jones won an individual gold at the youth championships in 2006 and a Canadian junior men’s team was world champion eight years ago in Legnica in 2011.

Christopher Perkins was a junior when he became senior world champion that same year. Dietmar Trillus won the title in 2007.

The 2019 World Archery Youth Championships takes place on 19-25 August in Madrid, Spain.