Shanghai 2024: Chinese recurve women’s team fight into gold final
The Chinese recurve women put themselves in a good position to win a gold medal at home after fighting into the finals of the season-opening Hyundai Archery World Cup in Shanghai.
Buoyed by a cheering crowd, the second seeded team of An Qixuan, Li Jiaman and Yang Xiaolei rallied from two set points down to win in a tiebreak over Germany at the Yuanshen Stadium on Thursday morning.
They will face a rookie team of Korea who sailed into the finals with a straight-set win over Indonesia.
“We don’t want to think too much about winning or losing, we just want to meet them [Korea] again and again,” said An.
In a thrilling semifinal, China showed hopes of recovery only in the third set, before they went to winning the fourth 56-54 drawing the match and forcing a shoot-off. The teams were tied again 29 each, but China was decided the winner owing to arrow closest to the centre.
“We did our best and the crowd cheering really motivated us to fight back,” added Li, the Nanjing 2014 Olympic Games gold medallist.
Seeded third, Germany has two members of the reigning world champion team in its ranks, Katharina Bauer and Charline Schwarz, who shoot alongside Elisa Tartler in Shanghai.
“Germany are a good and strong team, so we started carefully and made the changes accordingly,” said an ecstatic Kwon Yonghak, the Chinese coach. “We focused on our game and that was the key.”
The second seeded team overcame Chinese Taipei and USA, while Germany beat the Netherlands and Mexico, in the previous elimination rounds.
Top seed Korea is led by Lim Sihyeon, who topped the recurve women’s individual qualifying field on Wednesday with 683 points. Jeon Hunyoung and Nam Suhyeon are making their World Cup debuts this week.
The Korean men, led by in-form Kim Woojin, cruised into the recurve men’s team final, too, after thumping Chinese Taipei in straight sets.
It might look like a comfortable win, but he admitted that “it wasn’t an easy match, as the conditions were windy today and I made some mistakes.”
“Overall, I feel good about my game,” added Woojin, who matched the third-highest score for the 72-arrow 70-metre in history with 699 during individual qualifying.
In the gold medal match on Sunday morning, Korea will shoot against India’s Tarundeep Rai, Dhiraj Bommadevara and Pravin Ramesh Jadhav, who also displayed a dominating show to beat Italy, 5-1.
“We are happy to play as we do in practice and execute the plans for Olympic qualification,” said Bommadevara, who broke a national record with 693 on Wednesday. “Our fight is with ourselves. We are looking forward to play Korea.”
India will look forward to going one better than in Antalya exactly one year ago when they lost in a shoot-off to China in the gold final.
Even if this is not the number one goal of the season.
“Just a milestone to reach Paris,” Rai explained. “We have two more World Cups – we have to do consistently better to get the ticket for Paris.”
“We are going to work harder and smarter to not only just qualify but win a medal in Paris.”
Germany’s women and the men’s from Chinese Taipei later claimed bronze medals at the end of the session.
Competition continues this afternoon in Shanghai with compound individual eliminations.
Finals: Shanghai 2024
- Recurve men team: Korea versus India
- Recurve women team: Korea versus China
Watch coverage from Shanghai live with a subscription to archery+.
