Features

Looking back at Merida 2006 – the first Mexican World Cup Final

18 October 2024

Merida, Mexico

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Tlaxcala 2024 marks the fifth time that the Hyundai Archery World Cup Final has been held in Mexico – more than any other country.

Mexico is now one of the world’s leading archery nations, but not everyone now remembers that the very first World Cup Final of all was held there, back in 2006.

The World Cup emerged at a time when archery was further developing into a global sport. World Archery’s Tom Dielen had been working on the idea of a World Cup after Sydney 2000, as a way to raise the profile of the sport and strengthen its place in the pantheon of Olympic sports.

“I wanted to find a way for archery to exist between Olympic Games and also to have a real tool to attract sponsors to the sport, and not just have World Championships every two years. This project was given to my successor at that time as executive director, who kept it in his drawer.” he said.

When Dielen returned to World Archery in 2004 as secretary-general, he made the creation of an international World Cup a priority. “When our current President wanted me to come back I made it a condition that we would include this project in his presidential program.”

“The rest is history.”

Some of archery’s biggest events in that era had been held in iconic locations, ideal for TV. The 2003 World Archery Championships finals were held in Central Park in New York City, while the Athens 2004 Olympic Games archery competition was famously held in the Panathenaic Stadium.

The World Archery Youth Championships, held in even years at the time, were due to be held in Mexico in October 2006. Dielen worked with the organising committee to look for an iconic venue along similar lines, and visited several archaeological sites before settling on the one in Merida.

Merida, the capital of Yucatan, has a set of Mayan ruins known as the Mayapan Pyramids that would make a spectacular backdrop to the finals of the competition.

The first World Cup Final would be held on 22nd October, the day after the conclusion of the 2006 Youth World Championships, and the young archers were invited to stay and watch the senior final.

There were the same four events there are now – men's and women's individual compound, and men's and women's individual recurve – but at the time only the top four archers in each discipline were invited.

(This would change in 2010 when the top seven in each discipline, plus an archer from the host country, would be invited to compete.)

However, the remote location – and having just 24 hours to set up the competition – brought along a range of issues. “Challenging is putting it mildly,” said Dielen.

“We had a strike of the security guards, snakes early morning at the venue, sudden bans on advertising, and broadcast cables being too short and melting due to the heat. And the satellite connection only started working five minutes before we were about to go live.”

On top of that, some local people held a demonstration, angry that the location was being used for a sporting event.

The last fours at that first final in Merida included China's Zhang Juan Juan, who won the recurve women's competition over teammate Qian Jialing. Zhang would go on to become Olympic champion in 2008 at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The competition is perhaps best remembered for Reo Wilde's victory over Peter Elzinga of the Netherlands, where Wilde shot four sets clean to win 120-115 – a world record at the time.

(This was more remarkable because international compound competitions at the time were shot at 70 meters. Compound only changed to the 50-metre competitions in 2011.)

Despite the loss, Elzinga retains good memories of the event: ”The challenges World Archery had were tough, but they handled it really good.”

“I remember we shot a round robin match to set up the brackets. We had all the archers from the junior championship watching us. That was nice for younger people to watch the big stage. The crowd was sitting really right behind us.”

“My coach promised me a Mexican sombrero if I reached the finals. He gave it to me just before I got on the plane home, and I had to carry it the whole trip back to the Netherlands!”

It would be some years before the World Cup Final returned to Mexico, but in 2015, the competition was held in the iconic Zócalo Square in Mexico City in front of a crowd of 4,500. This paved the way for more highly successful finals in Tlaxcala and Hermosillo in the 2020s.

Merida 2006 set the tone for many spectacular World Cup Finals to come – and became a part of Mexican archery history too.