An San exits as weather again delays Asian Championships

The Olympic Champion, An San was eliminated from the individual competition at the Bangkok 2023 Asian Archery Championships today, falling to Mahta Abdollahi of Iran, 6-2 in the third round.

It was the highest profile exit on a day when all the major individual recurve seeds got through to the last 16, and another day that had to be halted due to storms on the field. Sunday’s competition was also interrupted due to the weather.

Tomomi Sugimoto of Japan, the eighth seed, was also eliminated early, along with her teammate Satsuki Noda, leaving Japan without any recurve women in the latter stages of the individual competition.

The main event of the day was the mixed team eliminations, in both compound and recurve. It mostly ran to the form book apart from the shock elimination of second recurve seeds Chinese Taipei, going down to the Philippines team in the first match.

The Philippines went on to push out Kazakhstan 5-3, despite shooting a miss in the third end.

The recurve mixed team semifinals will see the Philippines face China, and then the winner of Korea against Japan on Wednesday, in a last four with three familiar Asian powerhouses.

Kazakstan had a better day on the compound field though, their compound pairing of Adel Zhexenbinova and Andrey Tyutyun made it through to the last four along with Thailand and the big two Asian compound nations: India and Korea, the first and second seeds.

However, storms then again stopped play on the field, with the mixed team bracket not yet completed.

The competition will continue on Wednesday morning with delayed mixed team semifinals, followed by the crucial team eliminations – which could see Olympic places awarded – before the grand finals day on Thursday.