Brady, Casey lead US Olympic selection race as fields cut to 16 archers

Photos and quotes courtesy USA Archery.

World Archery Champion Brady Ellison and 15-year-old Casey Kaufhold remain top of the USA’s selection rankings for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games after the second stage of trials in Texas. More than 150 archers started the process but, after this weekend, just 16 men and 16 women remain in the race.

As well as Brady and Casey, five-time Olympian Khatuna Lorig, Rio 2016 Olympians Zach Garrett and Mackenzie Brown, and London 2012 team silver medallist Jacob Wukie all made the cut.

Jack Williams, Matt Requa and Erin Mickelberry, who shot for the USA this season, are also in the competition – as is former top international compound archer Crystal Gauvin.

The leaders are the two archers that earned the USA its Olympic quota places in 2019.

Ellison secured a men’s spot by winning the Hyundai World Archery Championships and the pair added a women’s place with mixed team gold at the Pan American Games in Lima.

The USA has one chance to upgrade the two individual places to team spots. Three teams in each gender will qualify for Tokyo at the third stage of the 2020 Hyundai Archery World Cup in Berlin, Germany.

Competition over the first two stages of the US Olympic trials has consisted of three 72-arrow 70-metre rounds. Athletes received points on ranking and bonus points if they hit a certain score.

“I’m super happy with how I shot. It was crazy windy but I feel super strong and I shot really good,” said Ellison. “We still have 1000 arrows of trials left so there’s no point getting excited about points yet.”

Top 16: US Olympic trials

• Recurve men: Brady Ellison, Josef Scarboro, Jacob Wukie, Jack Williams, Matthew Nofel, Alex Bourdage, Joonsuh Oh, Thomas Stanwood, Zach Garrett, Matthew Requa, Adam Whitlatch, Glen Thomas, Joony Kim, Matthew Zumbo, Andrew Park and Michael Plumber.
• Recurve women: Casey Kaufhold, Eliana Claps, Erin Mickelberry, Alexandria Zuleta-Visser, Crystal Gauvin, Khatuna Lorig, Mackenzie Brown, Nicole Turina, Jennifer Mucino-Fernandez, Catalina GNoriega, Valerie Wang, Amy Jung, Molly Nugent, Brianna Laux, Kelsey Lard and Branduin Stroud.

The 32 archers remaining in the race for Olympic places will continue to shoot for trials ranking points until Tuesday in Texas.

Stages three and four are scheduled for April and May 2020. The top-eight cut will happen at stage three and final, three-archer teams selected at the fourth.

Those archers will then attempt to win the full team quotas in Berlin in June. If they do not manage to upgrade the individual spots, only one man and one woman will represent the USA at Tokyo 2020.