Recurve women’s qualification on Monday morning in Copenhagen was vital for Rio 2016 team qualification.
Out of the 43 competing teams, only 16 were to proceed to next stage, qualifying for the elimination phase – in which winning the first round match means winning a team Olympic qualifying spot.
The rest: out of the world championships team event and team quota competition for Rio.
Halfway – after 36 arrows – the top team was, surprisingly, not Korea but Chinese Taipei by four points. Mexico trailed by 21 points at third place in the provisional standings.
Chinese Taipei’s Lin Shih-Chia also topped the individual intermediary ranking, two points ahead of Choe Ok Sil from DPR Korea and with four contenders behind by five – India’s Deepika Kumari, Korea’s Ki Bo Bae, teammate Tan Ya-Ting and Mexico’s Alejandra Valencia.
Korea forced the issue during the second half of the ranking round to finally regain the team qualification lead. Chinese Taipei finished second and China third.
A bitter struggle was played between the teams ranked around 16th place. France finally hung the last qualifying place just before Indonesia by four points and Belarus by eight.
Denmark missed the cut, landing in 19th place. A big disappointment for the host nation, although reigning world champion Maja Jager remained in the race, 15th individually, as well as teammate Carina Rosenvinge, 30th.
In the individual event however, it was slight 22-year-old Lin Shih-Chia who managed to resist the onslaught of Olympic champion Ki Bo Bae and took top seed by two points. Ki put her best efforts in to catch the leader over the final stretch.
Ki’s teammate Kang Chae Young finished third with the same score.
“I was nervous and I was quite surprised with the scores. I was keeping in mind what my coach told me, focusing on my technique and my body position,” Shih-Chia explained.
Two veteran athletes made experience speak in the second half to climb high in the ranking list. Six-time Olympian and former world number one from Italy, Natalia Valeeva rose from 43rd to 13th.
Georgia’s Khatuna Narimanidze – silver medallist at Baku 2015 European Games – scored the second best second half to come from 37th to 10th place: “The level on these championships is very high. Having the chance to shoot with such good archers and been on top 10 for me it’s simply amazing!”
Third after 36 arrows, Deepika Kumari from India had a hard time in the second half, but she nevertheless hooked the final spot the top eight, meaning she is exempt from the first two rounds and will enter the elimination phases in the third round.
“I tried to shoot good. I did well individually, and as a team we also made it for top 16. We will keep fighting to be on top,” said Deepika.
Three archers were tied at 103rd place and a shoot-off was necessary to decide on who would advance to elimination and who would not – as only the top 104 athletes go on to head-to-head matches.
Switzerland’s Nathalie Dielen and Celine Schobinger passed the cut with a nine and seven respectively, against a Colombia’s Maira Alejandra Sepulveda’s six.
