Abhishek Verma drops perfect score of 600 to pole in GT Open
Abhishek Verma produced a perfect performance in Strassen, Luxembourg shooting 600, the only archer to hit the score after two days of qualifications at the 2024 GT Open.
A four way tie from yesterday’s qualifying which saw Denmark’s Mathias Fullerton and Stephan Hansen, France's Nicolas Girard and USA’s James Lutz all drop 599 at the typical 18 metre indoor distance, meant that any compound men archer who could shoot all 60 of their arrows into the 10 ring would become the top seed heading into match play.
Asian Games silver medallist Verma did just that at the Guillaume Tell Archery club, the host of the second stage of the 2025 Indoor World Series which kicked off a fortnight ago in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“It's my first perfect score ever. This is my first in in the tournament. I'm happy with that. I guess this setup is good for me and I'm able to shoot again.”
“I am more focusing on the elimination and will try to do the same.”
As he has never won a medal in the premier international indoor circuit, world number nine Verma’s pole position is a surprise, but for 2020 Indoor World Series silver medallist Hansen it was little shock he found himself as one of the top seeds.
Guillaume Tell is one of the 29 year old’s favourite ranges having won three medals (two silver, one bronze) there in 2018, 2019 and 2023 and would have felt confident ahead of the matches, especially coming off the back of his victory at the annual Kings of Archery tournament last weekend.
But there would be no repeat of 2017 World Games Hansen's past successes this year as Antoine Le Bars knocked him out via shoot off in the second round with the Frenchman's 10 measured closest to the X spot (centre of target).
It was a much more memorable opening to the tournament for Luxembourg’s very own Mariya Klein in the compound women as she finished as the ninth seed, easily within the required top 32 to qualify for matches, her score of 591 setting a new national record.
Klein admitted though her new record was unexpected.
“Extremely happy with the record. I honestly didn't have it in my mind until somebody told me now, because I never know how many points exactly it was."
“So when I was told it was a record, I was very, very happy and surprised,” she added before facing Spain's Maria Pitarch and world number one Ella Gibson in matches, the latter beating her in the second round 150-149.
The most convincing display in the qualifying rounds was by Nicholas D’Amour in the recurve men who shot an impressive 594 in Strassen to become the number one seed with his closest competitor in qualifications Croatian Alen Remar with 587.
The 23 year old who represented the Virgin Islands at Tokyo and Paris failed to get himself carried away by his sharp shooting and praised the quality of the his fellow archers at the GT Open, 93 of which entered in this year’s recurve men field, down from last year’s 105 strong contingent.
“We'll see if it holds and there's still a lot of other sessions to go and a lot of other good archers. It's the season best so far, something much better than my other competitions so far this year.”
Much like Hansen though, D'Amour's form came to a sudden shocking end as he lost also via shoot off to two time Olympian Ziga Ravnikar.
Meanwhile, Lim Duna (590) and Lim Hana (587) came top two in the recurve women rankings and both reached the quarter finals, the duo offering a glimpse into the future of Korea’s women’s team who won their tenth straight Olympic recurve team gold this summer.
The final three rounds of matches are scheduled for tomorrow with medals and world ranking points up for grabs to conclude the weekend’s action in Strassen.
Not just for seniors though with there also being competitive matches held in the under-21 and over 50 compound and recurve categories.
