Sim, Wijler win World Series recurve titles in single-arrow tiebreakers

Sim Yeji, Steve Wijler, Viktoria Balzhanova and Kris Schaff won the individual titles at the 2019 Indoor Archery World Series Finals, held in the evening after the second day of The Vegas Shoot.

“It is amazing. My shooting lately has been a bit rough and it’s great to be back on the podium again,” said Wijler, who came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat Brady Ellison in a shoot-off for the recurve men’s title.

“To be honest, I don’t really care who I’m shooting against. If it’s Brady or whoever, I just want to win. It wasn’t my best match but I did enough.”

The recurve women’s final was the most impressive of all the gold medal matches.

Both Sim Yeji and Kang Chae Young dropped their third arrows into the nine – and those were the only shots out of the 10 in the regulation five sets.

Sim, who shot a perfect 12 arrows to win her final at the last leg of the tour in Nimes, France, shot first and shot a 10. Outdoor world record holder Kang sunk a low nine and Sim won the match.

“I was quite nervous and I didn’t know I could shoot that many 10s. I was competing with my teammate so it was less stressful, but I wanted to shoot well,” said the new Indoor Archery World Series Champion.

Viktoria Balzhanova beat Sarah Prieels, 146 to 144 points, in the compound women’s final and Kris Schaff dropped just a single point in his compound men’s victory over Stephan Hansen, 149-146.

Schaff added the indoor circuit crown to the Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion title he won in Samsun at the end of 2018. He said that doing that in front of his family, after his father was in the coaching box in Turkey and his brother was in the box in Vegas, was “just awesome”.

The 2019 Indoor Archery World Series consisted of stages in Strassen, Luxembourg; Macau, China; Rome, Italy; Nimes, France and Las Vegas, USA.

The Vegas Shoot is the fifth stage and hosts the final of the 2019 Indoor Archery World Series.