Local archer Nicolas Girard makes compound men’s final at Nimes Archery Tournament

Nineteen-year-old Nicolas Girard will shoot against defending champion Braden Gellenthien in the final of the 2020 Sud de France Nimes Archery Tournament.

Girard comes from Saint-Martin-de-Crau, a town 50 kilometres southeast of Nimes.

“I didn’t even think I’d pass the cut. In my matches I didn‘t even pay attention to the scores, I stayed focused ad shot the arrows in the 10,” he said.

“I made my best score in qualifying, broke my own record by one point, and broke the French record. I thought of nothing, I tried to clear my mind. It is not easy when there are all these people around. The stress level goes up.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to face Braden, it’s going to be crazy, it’s going to be top level. I‘m going to try my best.”

Girard is not a household name. But he did make the shootdown in Vegas last year with a perfect 900.

He qualified third in Nimes with 597 out of a possible 600 points for the 60-arrow 18-metre ranking round. In matchplay, he defeated experienced archers Reo Wilde and Stephan Hansen to set up the final with Braden.

Gellenthien was ranked fourth for the brackets on the same qualifying score as Girard.

Top seed Mike Schloesser, who had 599, lost his second-round match to Steve Anderson in a double shoot-off.

Paige Pearce (596), Brady Ellison (595) and Kim Surin (591) were the other number one qualifiers. Only Ellison will contest a gold medal at this tournament. The world number one will face US teammate Jack Williams in the recurve men’s final.

Olympic Champion Chang Hye Jin and reigning Indoor Archery World Series Champion Sim Yeji made the recurve women’s gold medal match.

Lisell Jaatma and Tanja Jensen will contest the compound women’s title.

The cut scores to make the matchplay phase decreased across the board this year in Nimes. The recurve men’s 32nd place was 577 (-3), recurve women’s 553 (-3), compound men’s 589 (-1) and compound women’s 573 (-2).

However, a tournament-best seven compound women shot 590 points or more.

The Sud de France Nimes Archery Tournament is the fifth event of the 2020 Indoor Archery World Series. Winners of the event will receive 1000 points towards the circuit’s elite ranking.

Junior finals from Nimes will be streamed live in the morning on Sunday 19 January. The senior medal matches will follow from 13h30 CET (local).

Watch on World Archery’s YouTube channel.

The fifth event of the 2020 Indoor Archery World Series is the Sud de France Nimes Archery Tournament on Friday 17 to Sunday 19 January 2020.