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Salt Lake 2018: Schedule, storylines and factsheet

17 June 2018

Salt Lake City (USA)

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With half of the 2018 Hyundai Archery World Cup season already complete, the circuit’s next stop takes the world’s best archers to the state of Utah in the USA – and the Easton Salt Lake Archery Center.

The purpose-built training and competition facility is the only pure-archery venue on the current tour, hosting a leg for the second consecutive year.

In 2018, eight archers – Kim Woojin, Lee Woo Seok, Chang Hye Jin, Ksenia Perova, Mike Schloesser, Kim Jongho, Sara Lopez and Yesim Bostan – have already booked tickets to the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final under the new win-and-in rule. Of them, only Lopez is shooting at stage three.

And that means we’ll add at least three new names to the Samsun line-up by the time competition is done here in the crossroads of the west.

Factsheet: Salt Lake 2018

Venue: Easton Salt Lake Archery Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Dates: 18-24 June
Number of athletes: 203 (113 recurve, 90 compound) from 34 countries
Where to watch: Live on World Archery’s YouTube and Facebook (except USA), Olympic Channel; live or delayed highlights on NBC Olympic Channel (USA), Claro Sports (Mexico and Colombia), Eurosport, Sky New Zealand and more (check local listings)

Schedule

Tuesday 19 June: Compound and recurve qualification
Wednesday 20 June: Early round individual matches and mixed team eliminations
Thursday 21 June: Individual and team eliminations
Saturday 23 June: Compound finals
Sunday 24 June: Recurve finals

Defending stage winners

Individual: Im Dong Hyun, Korea (not returning); Chang Hye Jin, Korea (not returning); Mike Schloesser, Netherlands (not returning); Andrea Marcos, Spain (not returning)

Team: recurve men – Russia, women – Chinese Taipei, mixed – Korea; compound men – Korea, women – Korea, mixed – Colombia

5 storylines you should know

1. Korea absent from stage three. It’s normal for the Korean team to skip one stage of the international circuit each year. The athletes all have a responsibility to their professional teams and, with the Asian Games in August, the international calendar is also a near-full-time duty. The knock-on effect of this is that…

2. …Salt Lake is a prime opportunity to book a Samsun ticket. Look for archers like Brady Ellison, Sjef van den Berg, Tan Ya-Ting, Braden Gellenthien, Stephan Hansen, Chen Yi-Hsuan or Linda Ochoa-Anderson to take advantage.

All – except world number one Hansen – sit within the top 10 of the Hyundai Archery World Cup rankings. A win at stage three would secure a spot at the season final, while a top-eight finish wouldn’t be far off.

3. Hansen running out of time. Despite taking gold and silver medals at the last two World Archery Championships, the best compound man in the world, right now, has only one appearance at the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final, finishing second in Rome in 2017.

He only accrued five points at Antalya 2018 and, although a stage win would put him in and onto the finals roster, failing to make significant ground in Salt Lake would leave just the one remaining opportunity in Berlin.

4. Early arrivals. The teams from Chinese Taipei, Japan and Canada arrived early in Salt Lake City to take advantage of the archery centre’s impressive facilities and acclimatise. Check where they land during qualifying.

5. Cadet world champion to first World Cup. Bryan Alvarado Fernandez won Puerto Rico its first world archery title across disciplines and events at the World Archery Youth Championships in Rosario at the end of 2017. The 17-year-old archer makes his debut on the Hyundai Archery World Cup circuit at this event.

Weather forecast

We’re expecting high-20s to low-30s in temperature, which is a little cooler than the event in Salt Lake City in 2017. More important, though, is the strong wind that’s expected to stick around until Wednesday (and the end of early eliminations).

Those byes into the third round of eliminations – and past the weather – for the top eight seeds in each event after qualification might turn out to be critical at this tournament.