Pineda posts impressive qualifying at home world-ranking event

Competition at the world-ranking event in the Colombian city of Medellin got underway Tuesday with qualification rounds for all archers.

The event’s a busy one, awarding Pan American Champion titles to the under-21 and over-50 age groups, qualifying youth archers to the Cali 2021 Junior Pan American Games and awarding world-ranking points to the senior categories.

Host Colombia got off to a good start in the latter events.

Daniel Pineda, Maira Sepulveda and Alejandra Usquiano all topped their qualification fields, while Daniel Munoz finished second to El Salvador’s Roberto Hernandez, only losing out on the number one spot on an X-count tiebreak after they tied on score with 707.

Pineda shot his best score of the new season at 670 points.

“I felt calm and trusted in my work," he said. "The calmer I am, the better results I can get, and it’s all about that – enjoying every shot and the competition in general."

The 27-year-old has topped 670 during qualification in four of the past five international seasons.

He’ll be an integral part of Colombia’s campaign to qualify a full men’s team quota to the upcoming Olympic Games at the final qualifier in Paris in June – and results like this won’t hurt his confidence.

“The preparation we’ve had since [the Pan American Championships] in Mexico hasn’t been the best," he said. "We haven’t been able to train much, so I’m happy with the result. It was good despite it all."

Many of the archers competing this week in Medellin are youth athletes.

Mexican archers seeded top in all four under-21 categories. Caleb Urbina, Paola Saucedo, Sebastian Garcia and Dafne Quintero now enter the matchplay phase of the tournament as the favourites.

Competition continues in Medellin with the mixed team events on Wednesday.