Pictures courtesy of Adrian Boyer.
For the second year running, the junior finals offered an intense warm-up for the finals arena at the third stage of the Indoor Archery World Cup in Nimes, France.
An early morning start, the stands quickly began to fill when the secondary tournament, being held in Nimes’ secondary hall, started to wind down – and the French youth took to the field of play.
Melanie Gaubil brought the crowd its first win to cheer for – after two lost bronze opportunities – when the 15th-seeded recurve junior woman in the competition took down the number nine ranked Brit. Bryony Pitman shot a point less than Gaubil in each set, losing the match 6-0 – but by just a narrow margin.
One match later, the last of the session, Valentin Ripaux denied Slovenia’s Gasper Strajhar a single set point in the recurve junior men’s gold medal match.
Strajhar looked to be drawing back when he was a point up on Ripaux in the third – with two 10s to Ripaux’s 10-9 – but dropped his third arrow low into the eight.
The French athlete could win with a 10 – and he put his shot on the spider.
Spanish archers coached by London 2012 Olympian Elias Cuesta collected two junior medals in Nimes.
Enrique Cavanillas beat French archer Maxime Tisserond in straight sets to take recurve junior men’s bronze then, in the following match, Teresa Cerezo took compound junior women’s gold.
Cerezo comfortably beat Janine Hunsperger of Switzerland in the final, 141-138.
Korean Hyundai Steel archer Hong Sung So outscored junior world indoor champion Viktor Orosz from Hungary by a point to take the compound junior men’s title at Nimes 2016. Viviano Mior had bronze.
