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Japan selects eight-strong squads for winter offseason ahead of Olympic year

1 December 2019

Tokyo, Japan

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The first phase of selections for Japan’s national team in 2020 has cut the field of 32 to just 16 – eight men and eight women – for winter training.

Four archers were eliminated on 13 November and a further four on 14 November.

Among those no longer in play for a spot on the Japanese team at the 2020 Olympic Games is two-time Olympic medallist Hiroshi Yamamoto and recently crowned recurve women’s national champion Yu Irie.

Reigning World Archery Field Champion Wataru Oonuki led the recurve men’s selection after the first two days having shot an average of 673.75 points across four 72-arrow 70-metre ranking rounds. The cut to make the top eight was 645.5.

Ren Hayakawa was the top scorer in the recurve women, averaging 665.25 points. The women’s top-eight cut was 647.5.

There are two more phases to this selection process. It is expected that the scores reset at the start of each day of the trials – which would continue the format from the first phase – leaving absolutely no margin for error.

On 22 March 2020, the eight athletes in each gender will be cut to five. (Two will be eliminated on 21 March and a third the day afterwards.)

A final two days of trials will take place on 11-12 April 2020, after which the top three recurve men and recurve women in the selection rankings will be named as Japan’s team for the Games next summer.

The trials are taking place at Yumenoshima Park Archery Field, which is the same venue that will be used for the archery competitions at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.