Korea’s Choi Misun beat Deepika Kumari in the gold medal match at the Mexico City 2015 Archery World Cup Final. She adds it to a list of accomplishments that includes a gold and silver medal at World Cup stages, silver at the Universiade, World Archery Championships bronze and gold at the Olympic test event.
She achieved all that in one year: 2015, her first international season.
Misun was tested through her first two matches in Mexico City. Both the quarterfinal against host nation representative Alejandra Valencia and the semi, contested by the USA’s Mackenzie Brown, went a full five sets.
But the Korean athlete was the top seeded recurve woman at the competition for a reason.
Overcoming rough sets in both matches, 19-year-old Misun found the middle when she needed it, clinching a path through the brackets in the last sets.
In the final, she hit the ground running.
Reeling off three 29-point sets to quickly put her Indian opponent, Kumari, on the back foot, Choi was 5-1 up and in charge. (Deepika also shot 29 for the first set.)
Both archers put in a 29 in the last, split the set points, and Misun won gold, 6-4.
“I just become Archery World Cup Champion, another title that makes me the first in the world,” said the Korean, already ranked world number one after an incredible debut season. “This makes me happy and pretty sure it will help me to do even better as I would very much like to stay on top.”
Kumari, collecting a fourth silver medal at the Archery World Cup Final after being runner-up at Istanbul 2011, Tokyo 2012 and Paris 2013 was disappointed.
“I wish I had won gold,” she admitted. “It’s something that doesn’t seem to happen to me.”
Incredibly, for all her success, Deepika’s only two international gold medals to date are the famous Commonwealth Games win in 2010 and, two years later, the Antalya stage of the Archery World Cup.
“My arrows went up. I tried to fix my sight but nothing worked,” explained Kumari who, after reflection, noted that she had to be happy with yet another silver medal. An unparalleled achievement in consistency on the circuit.
Chinese Taipei’s Le Chien-Ying, who qualified only at the last stage of the year, looked far more settled than Mackenzie Brown in the bronze medal match.
“I shot some good arrows but my sight was off just a little bit, I think,” explained Brown, who failed to gain a foothold and lost the third-place playoff in straight sets.
“By the time I got it dialed in, during the last end, it was just too late.”
Mackenzie had put fourth seed Ana Maria Rendon out of the competition in the quarterfinals before taking eventual winner Choi to five sets in the semis. Shooting for bronze, she couldn’t find the same form, posting sets of 26 and 24 to go 4-0 down, before Chien-Ying scored a final 29-point set to secure the medal.
