Four years on from a London 2012 bronze medal match that saw a Mexican recurve men’s team fall shy of knocking Korea off the podium, the two teams are set to meet in the gold medal match at the second stage of the 2016 Hyundai Archery World Cup.
The two teams are in differing situations in the lead-up to Rio.
Korea has a full men’s team quota qualified, which the group collected at the World Archery Championships in Copenhagen in 2015, while Mexico collected its first and a single men’s place at the continental qualification tournament held just prior to the World Cup stage, on the same field, in Colombia.
The Mexican athletes still have a chance to qualify a full team to the Games at stage three – and this guaranteed silver, and potential bronze, will be a sorely-needed confidence boost in the lead up to that pivotal event.
Seeded seventh in Medellin, Juan Rene Serrano, Ernesto Boardman and Oldair Zamora beat host nation Colombia in straight sets in the first round to advance to a quarterfinal meeting with the USA. The States team, Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminski and Jacob Wukie, had the very same line-up as the London 2012 team silver winning roster.
Mexico started better and led 2-0, with 53 points against USA’s 49 in the first, as the latter landed two arrows out of the yellow-rings – one seven and a five. Their advantage then increased as Mexico drew ahead to 4-0.
Though the third and fourth sets, Juan Rene, Ernesto and Oldair put half of their 12 arrows into the eight, opening doors for their resilient opponents, and allowing the USA to catch-up, eventually forcing a shoot-off.
Mexico: 10-9-9.
USA: 10-9-9.
But while Mexico’s 10 was in the X-ring, the USA’s was not. The Latin American squad advanced on merit of having an arrow closer to the centre.
“Against the USA, things weren’t easier,” explained Serrano, who’s referred to as “El Capi” (from el Capitan) by his teammates. “It was a difficult match, we started leading and then we went into a shoot-off. We were lucky my teammate Oldair shot an X when they had a 10, for us to win.”
“You need tranquility, you need to relax your mind and body while you shoot and this way control the nerves,” Ernesto said, explaining the team’s preparation for the tiebreaker.
In the semis, the Mexican trio beat Spain, 6-2. In the finals, they’ll meet Korea – an opponent they’d be happy to beat in Medellin, but even happier to overcome at the next stage.
“We have trained a lot and sometimes we think about how to beat them. We would like to get the chance to win the Olympic spot in Antalya and beat them as well,” said Oldair.
“We want to beat them with 55 or 56 points in each end. We are trying to control our nerves and be more relaxed during the matches and it has been working well so far. The key will be to remember all we do in our training and apply it in competition.”
Spain will shoot for recurve men’s team bronze against Canada.
Recurve Sunday in Medellin will also see the Mexican recurve women’s team shoot for bronze against the USA, a rematch from Medellin 2015, which the States group won. This year, Aida Roman, Alejandra Valencia and Gabriela Bayardo are more confident.
“We’ll win this time,” said Alejandra, while laughing with her teammates. “Everyone will see the Mexican teams giving their best in the matches and hopefully winning both of them.”
The Mexican women won their first two matches against Cuba and Italy by the same margin, 5-1. In the semifinals, they lost to the reigning Olympic Champion in the team event, Korea.
“We had very consistent matches in terms of scores,” said Aida. “From our first match we wanted to shoot 55 points or more and we achieved that. We had really good matches against Cuba and Italy, but in archery one point makes the difference.”
“We are working more on objectives rather than on our opponents. We want to achieve what we think we are capable of,” concluded Gabriela.
First and third seeded teams Korea and China will shoot for gold.
