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26 nations remain in Copenhagen race for Rio individual quotas

29 July 2015

Copenhagen (DEN)

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The world championships in Copenhagen act as the primary qualifier for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Joining the host nation Brazil, the first eight team places were awarded on team elimination day to quarterfinalists in the Copenhagen recurve men’s and recurve women’s competitions.

Eight individual places remain to award during the worlds week.

They are awarded to the teams with the eight highest ranked archers still in the individual event that have not already qualified a team and thus the full quota of three athletes to the next Games.

That means a secondary Olympic qualification tournament may be required on Friday to decide who takes any spots left over as the field is whittled down – as losers in all rounds outside the quarterfinals are ranked the same.

With two phases of individual eliminations complete – the first and second rounds – 26 nations remain in the running for individual Olympic quotas.

In the men’s competition, the 18-country list includes host nation Denmark – with Casper Lauridsen, who is to shoot against Ku Bonchan – Canada, Mexico and Ukraine, represented by Beijing 2008 Olympic Champion Viktor Ruban.

Takaharu Furukawa, who won Olympic silver for Japan at the London 2012 Games, has a third-round clash against Archery World Cup finalist in 2014 Florian Kahllund from Germany.

If an archer wins a space, that quota spot goes to his nation – and the athlete to represent the country in Rio is appointed later by the team.

At the moment, Germany has no invitation to the next Olympics at all – after both their men’s and women’s teams lost in the first round during team eliminations.

Featuring Baku 2015 gold medallist Karina Winter, the women’s team was seeded seventh and lost to India in a shoot-off.

Chinese Taipei, Ukraine and the USA also have a chance to win a single quota spot in the women’s event – in which some places may be decided in the third, or at least fourth, round of Copenhagen competition because there are only archers representing 11 nations without team quotas remaining in the event.

The men’s should go to at least the fourth and likely later, with the final quotas from this primary Olympic qualifier only available on Friday after the Olympic secondary tournament is complete.

Following Copenhagen, teams will have a chance to secure spots at the continental qualifying tournaments and at the final qualifier.