Category Archives: archery

news roundup rio2016

56 days to go: archery and Olympics news

10 June, 2016

Antalya finals field from drone camera at #AWC2014 Photo: World Archery

So, the World Cup stage 3 starts this weekend in the familiar venue of Antalya. It’s always the most popular stage on the tour, being on an upmarket stretch of a Turkish beach resort and with most of the archers in a very nice hotel indeed. Some teams, e.g. India, have been there for a while already. WA preview is here.

This edition apparently now the largest turnout (300+) of recurve archers at a World Cup stage ever, many of them there for the last chance tournament for Rio places on Thursday evening (teams) and Friday morning (individuals). Three team places per gender and at least three individual places per gender are on offer – there may be more depending on what happens in the team rounds. A staggering 48 men’s teams and 27 women’s teams are going for those spots. (It’s also the final Paralympic qualifier over in the Czech Republic).

Antalya is so busy there are two separate days of qualification, and pretty much every team is out there at full strength in the last major international before the big dance. You can follow along at worldarchery.org from next week, with the usual finals next weekend.

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The FISU World University Archery championships wrapped up in Mongolia this weekend, with a strong Korean team taking a lot of what was on offer, and Rio alternate Kang “The Destroyer” Chae Young sweeping three medals including individual gold. I’m sure she’d happily swap the lot for a trip to Brazil, but hey.

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Speaking of Rio, I was nosing around the Sambadrome venue in Rio on Google Earth, and found something amazing. As you virtually ‘drive’ into the Sambadrome in sunlight, it changes to nighttime at Carnival. If the archery looks anything like this… well bowled. Look for yourself and start exploring here.
Also, World Archery just shared this pic of the Sambadrome – our Sambadrome – under Olympic construction:

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Photo: http://aa.com.tr/

17 year olds Mete Gazoz and Yasemin Ecem Anagoz seem to have been confirmed for Rio after winning their places at the European Championships last month, according to this. They will be the youngest athletes in the Turkish delegation.

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Wider Rio news: Thomas Bach faces a parade of difficult decisions about doping as a Refugees Team is confirmed for the Games, with six track athletes , two swimmers, and two judokas. As for Zika, there’s been a few casualties already. “Zika cases at Olympics will be ‘close to zero“, says the Brazilian sports minister – but then he would, wouldn’t he? Some other high-profile athletes are taking slightly more dramatic measures including freezing their own sperm. Also, Team Nigeria aren’t helping their athletes with the sexy times.

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Choi Misun won a MVP award from a Korean women’s sport organisation. Considering she’s the world number one, and one of Korea’s best chances for individual gold in Rio, that’s kind of an understatement. 🙂

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At WA, there’s news of an interesting new app. This week’s best Olympian: and we’ve hit the top five with Yun Mi Jin, who took individual and team gold at Sydney 2000. She hasn’t actually retired yet, either (whoops…:) )

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From Forces TV, there’s a nugget about treating PTSD with archery. From the Archery Blogger, there’s an interview with Jesse Broadwater. And finally, an interesting piece about kyudo in California. All archery requires dedication, but the traditional martial art of Japan, even as taught in the West, requires even more:

“This isn’t about archery,” DeProspero says. “It’s about learning Japanese culture. It’s a tea ceremony with a bow and arrow.”…. A lot of people don’t return; the practice takes a long time. I’m not interested in tourists. You have to have a genuine interest.”

Bye!

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news roundup rio2016

63 days to go: archery and Olympics news

3 June, 2016

GBR men’s team waiting for their gold medal match. Photo: © The Infinite Curve 2016

The European Championships wrapped up in some style last weekend, in the appropriate surroundings of Old Market Square, Nottingham. I was up there on media duties, and wrote a piece about that here. You can also read about the Olympics continental qualifying tournament here, and who will be going to Rio who isn’t already. Congratulations to Jon Nott and team for putting together such a spectacular, smooth-running event.

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Pic by Demir Durak

The Conquest Cup, an invitation-only, cash-prize event in Istanbul as the showpiece of their Okçular Vakfı range (a pet project of the Turkish president, by the way) wrapped up last Sunday, but they’re not big on broadcasting the results. It looks like ladies recurve was won by Tatiana Biltrikova, with Lin Chia-En second and Karina Winter third. Korea took mixed team. I only know this by literally browsing through unlabelled pictures of the podium. Have a look yourself!

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Currently running in Ulanbataar, Mongolia are the FISU World University Championships. Ranking and team rounds were done today with Park Seongcheol and Kang “The Destroyer” Chae Young topping the recurve pile. No TV coverage I can see, but you can check the results on IANSEO here – or info.worldarchery.org just this weekend.

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Various nations are starting to announce squads for Rio. First up, the USA:

Brady Ellison
Zach Garrett
Jake Kaminski

Mackenzie Brown
Hye Youn Park
Khatuna Lorig

The USA only have one women’s spot qualified, but Mackenzie Brown takes it for finishing top of the trials. Park and Lorig only get to go if the USA women manage to qualify a full team in Antalya. Hye Youn Park is the relative unknown here. She’s originally from Korea, but emigrated to the USA a few years ago (but not in enough time to try for London, under IOC rules). Full details here.

You may also be interested in a parent’s perspective on Zach Garrett making the team.

Australia announced their men’s team and single women’s place after the final stages of their trials. (Video with Taylor Worth here.)

Alec Potts
Ryan Tyack
Taylor Worth

Alice Ingley

….which was extra tough on Semra Ferguson, who won the women’s place at the Oceania qualifier – and is apparently appealing the decision to send Ingley. Full details here.

Finally, Mexico announced their squad:

Alejandra Valencia
Aida Roman
Gabriela Bayardo

Juan Rene Serrano
Ernesto Boardman
Oldair Zamora

…but just Boardman will be going from the men’s list unless the Mexican men qualify a full team in Antalya. Mariana Avitia, the London bronze medallist, was cut from the trials at an earlier stage. A bigger surprise is Luis Alvarez not making the team, but apparently everyone else was well, better. Full details here (in Spanish).

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Crispin Duenas, as we all know, loves to chat. Here he is talking to the National Post of Canada. Interesting material on his process as an athlete:

“I love the fact that after every new archery movie comes out we get an influx of people wanting to register for lessons, but I always tell people that what you see in the movies isn’t necessarily what we actually do. You can’t do this, you can’t do that, that doesn’t actually happen when you shoot a bow. If they’re lucky enough to be talking to me while I’m holding my bow, I’ll say here, try this. And they’ll pick up my bow and the first thing they’ll say is ‘oh my goodness, that’s really heavy’.”

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Over at WA this week is Tom Dielen’s blog post reflecting on 20 years with World Archery, with lots of fascinating detail – well worth a read. It’s quite sobering to think, with the opening of the amazing WA Excellence Centre this year, that at one point international archery was entirely run from an unremarkable flat in Milan. That looked like this:

Also over at WA, this week’s all-time greatest Olympic archer is another Italian, Marco Galiazzo. Three consecutive medals (gold, silver, gold) from three consecutive Games. That’s pretty special – possibly unique?

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The Korean team are flaunting their big name kit branding from Head, Elord, and hipster outdoor Korea brand Kolon Sport (who do the shoes). Glossy promotional video right here – all in Korean, but you’ll get the idea.

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Wider Olympics news: five new sports have been approved for inclusion in the Tokyo 2020 games – baseball, softball, karate, sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing. It’s subject to final ratification, but that looks like a formality. Full details on Inside The Games. Baseball is huge in Japan, so that’s a no-brainer, and sport climbing looks like it has a lot to offer the lay viewing public. But skateboarding is easily the most controversial on the list, with the various governing bodies arguing amongst themselves and no-one really sure what an Olympic competition will look like – although there seems to be no doubt that it will be a big TV draw. Some of the Olympic commentariat aren’t impressed.

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Finally, from the Irish Examiner, we have five facts that prove archery is the most interesting sport at the Olympics. I absolutely love the quote from Lida Howell from back in 1904:

“Archery is a picturesque game, the range with its smooth green and distant glowing target with its gold and radiating red, blue, black and white, the white-garbed players, with graceful big bows and flying arrows, makes a beautiful picture.”

Bye!

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EAC2016 European Championships

European Archery Championships 2016

30 May, 2016

Nottingham. The home of R***n H**d. I rankle a bit when I hear the name, because it’s the laziest of lazy journalistic cliches but still gets routinely trotted out whenever target archery is mentioned. When Alison Williamson – six times an Olympian for Great Britain and an Olympic bronze medallist in 2004 – retired, the Midlands radio show they chose to announce it on played the song. You know. That one. You get the feeling they wouldn’t do that to Jessica Ennis-Hill.

Still, I suppose it did feel appropriate to have the meet here, in a town brimming with mediaeval history. I was on multi-media duties for the last three days: writing, photographing, interviewing and social media-ing. On finals day, in Old Market Square, I had quickly portrait up winners and losers, which is why a lot of the photos are, well, that.

It was preceded by a continental qualifying tournament, on the Thursday evening and Friday morning, with six precious Rio spots available and packed with drama and tension, cheers and tears. You can read about that here.

Special thanks to Jon Nott and team for pulling together such a remarkable event, with a truly spectacular finals venue, sold out on Sunday. Incredible job. I have no idea how you’d manage something this size. Just brilliant.

And it was a great weekend for GBR: qualifying a place for Rio, making four finals and taking two well-deserved medals, and a crowd keen on making a racket. Moving back towards the top tier. In the words of Martin Evans, “I think the lion’s claws are starting to grow back”.

GBR. Pic by Malcolm Rees.

So who won? Full results are here. You can read the news reports I had a hand in, too:

Recurve – individual & mixed team

Recurve – teams

GBR – recurve teams

GBR – Huston

Compound – teams

Compound – individual

As for photos: as well as Dean’s pics from the weekend you can look through the albums of Derek Sizeland, Dean Layton-James, and Bimble, too. Thanks to everybody, and great to put a few faces to names, too. What a great weekend.

Olympic Continental Qualifying Tournament

Alicia Marin

FRA on the practice range

Larry v Mete

Larry midstride

ready for my close-up

Mete fistbump

Mete Gazoz

winning the Rio place

winning the Rio place – Azerbaijan

winning the Rio place – Turkey

FINALS DAY – COMPOUND

dress rehearsal

GBR ladies compound

GBR & NED compound ladies

Turkey compound ladies

FRA compound men

DEN compound men

Sarah Prieels

Mariaa Vinogradova

Stephan Hansen

FINALS – RECURVE SUNDAY

this guy

UKR warmup

RUS warmup

Lucas Daniel warmup

GBR recurve men

GBR & GER recurve ladies

UKR recurve ladies

the wait

full house for GBR

Patrick – thumbs

MOLDOVAAAAA!

Veronika Marchenko

Lisa Unruh

Jean-Charles Valladont

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EAC2016

70 days to go… archery & Olympics news

27 May, 2016

Patrick Huston

More rumbles down the road to Rio: the European Championships are well underway in Nottingham. The home nation chalked up some confidence-boosting victories with the men’s recurve team making the gold medal match and the women’s recurve and compound teams both making bronze finals, before Patrick Huston strode through the field to make the bronze individual final, putting plenty of GBR shirts in front of the home crowd this weekend. Russia also had a great day at the office this week.

Finals are compound Saturday and recurve Sunday, and will be broadcast here.

For many nations, though, something much more important was at stake: the continental qualifying tournament on Thursday evening and Friday morning, and its six precious individual spots for Rio. In the end, two archers from Turkey, one each from Slovakia, Finland and Azerbaijan, and (yesssss) Great Britain grabbed spots. World Archery roundup here. That Patrick Huston clinched the place by winning the bronze medal match, every ten roared on by an augmented GB squad. He was only beaten in the semi by the on-fire Gete Mazoz of Turkey – who will also be shooting for gold on Sunday. AGB roundup here.

Watch the BBC Sport interview with Patrick here.

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Bubbling news: Canadian international Jay Lyon has been suspended after failing a drugs test at the Arizona Cup. He is currently unable to compete in Antalya, and looks unlikely to be competing in Rio – pending appeals. More on this story as I get it.

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In Turkey, the invitation-only Conquest Cup is underway at the Ockular Vakfi in Istanbul, which I wrote about a couple of years ago. Big cash prizes and lots of big names from around the world – check out the participant list.

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The USA are finally wrapping up their Rio selections this Sunday and Monday.

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Over at WA, this week’s best-ever Olympian is Park Kyung-Mo, in at number 7. The model of disciplined, intelligent Korean archery, he amassed everything but individual Olympic gold over his career:

“If you’re an athlete, taking part in the Olympics is everyone’s dream come true. If I think back to the times I participated, my heart still beats.”

Photo: Getty Images

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Want to know ‘everything you need to know’ about India’s exuberantly named recurver Bombayla Devi Laishram? Here you go.

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Crystal Gauvin wrote on her blog about her times in Medellin and Redding, with her usual candour. As I’ve mentioned before, I really wish more elite archers would keep blogs, even if just occasionally. It would add richness and colour to the sport. Come on. Get stuck in.

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Over in Korea, the pressure is just starting to pile on the great white sharks, as the Olympic committee wheel out their best prospects for photocalls and interviews. The nation is expecting ten gold medals, apparently – and the archery team is fully expected to bring back at least a third of those. They will be sending over Korean chefs to prepare food for their teams, after the archers (at least) apparently found it difficult to get used to the food at the test event. Kim Jung-Haeng, the chef de mission, said this:

“As many know, the local situation in Brazil is not favourable for the Korean team. The country is 12 time zones away from here and it will take more than 20 hours to get there. Plus there are also security and health issues. However, the Korean committee will provide full support so that the athletes can display their best performance there,” Kim said.

It’s clear that Ki Bo Bae is now pretty adept at handling the media, and can happily say the right things and try to manage expectations. But there’s no mistaking the Korean national mood. Nothing less than gold will do. It seems the time zone problem can be managed; a bigger issue for the archers is whether the Asian (and indeed, the European) teams will be really used to the temperature and humidity outdoors in Rio – or the floodlights that will be used in the individual competition.

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Speaking of Brazil, we have some bad archery. REALLY bad archery. Not for the squeamish. And this report from China is almost as grim.

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Finally, a great story from the Paralympics at Athens 2004, where Team USA’s Jeff Favry tells the story of the photographer who changed his life. Interesting read.

Bye!

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news roundup

77 days to go: archery & Olympics news

20 May, 2016

SHANGHAI, CHINA - MAY 1: In this handout image provided by the World Archery Federation, Larry Godfrey of Great Britain shoots in the recurve men team bronze medal match during the Hyundai Archery World Cup on May 1, 2016 in Shanghai , China. (Photo by Dean Alberga/World Archery via Getty Images)

Larry Godfrey (Photo by Dean Alberga/World Archery via Getty Images)

In these weeks leading towards the ‘big dance’ in Rio and increasing coverage for the sport, I am going to try and give some shape to my archery blog / social media ’empire’ (ha!) by doing a proper round up of things once a week, in the manner of Ollie Williams’ much-missed Frontier Sports. The plan is: every Friday at some point. Or more. Enjoy.

The last-ever World Cup stage in Medellin wrapped with Korea unbeaten in recurve finals matches, the first stage win for Brady Ellison since Lausanne 2014, and a clutch of gold medals for Sara Lopez. Full coverage here. The Brady final match, displaying the sort of dominant, steely World Cup confidence Ellison showed in 2010/11, is worth another watch. The Korean recurve machine wasn’t looking entirely bulletproof, but the wall held, and no-one proved capable of giving them a close match on Sunday. Antalya will hopefully be interesting.

Next week is the European Championships in Nottingham, UK, the last continental qualifier for the big dance. Although given the relative lack of press coverage so far, you’d be forgiven for not knowing it was on. I’ll be up there for the finals. See you there.

On the World Archery website, this week’s best Olympic archer of all time is Michele Frangilli, in at number 8. What a dude. Watch that draw right here:

A somewhat lively, topic-wandering discussion has erupted over at Archery Talk on the series.

No big surprises as India named their women’s team for Rio. After six stages of selection trials held over months, the Archery Association of India picked Deepika Kumari, Bombayla Devi Laishram and Laxmirani Majhi to represent India in Brazil. The men’s team are still looking for three spots in Antalya, they currently have just the one. World Archery roundup here, something from the Indian media here.

The Times Of India ran with the squad’s visit to a Hindu temple in Tirupati to pray for divine blessing immediately after selection – Archers don’t mind divine intervention.

Several other nations are close to picking their final threes and ones: Australia wrap it up this weekend.

General Olympics news: as the doping scandals and calls for Russia to be chucked out of Rio rumble on, there is better news about the Zika virus, even as Korea and others unveil mosquito-repelling Rio uniforms. It wasn’t all this doom and gloom a few months before London 2012, was it? Oh yeah… so it was.

Interesting, mildly candid interview with Team GB’s Larry Godfrey in the Bristol Post, although it couldn’t resist a Robin Hood reference, dooming it in Infinite Curve eyes to the absolute lowest of the lazy journalist low. Must try harder. Or just stop altogether.

Is Archery Really As Dope A Skill As It Is In Marvel Films? Leaving aside Betteridge’s Law Of Headlines, this is an entertaining – and by the usual standards, reasonably well researched – article about archery in popular culture. And they don’t mention L**s A****sen once! Bonus points!

Gratuitous Ki Bo Bae reference of the week? An English-voiceovered chat with her by FISU, home of the Universiade, end of last year. This will get the most clicks of any link on this post, by the way. I know. It tells me. 🙂

What else have we got? Oh yeah. A cat called Jake Kaminski. (From here. Pic by Kaela Thompson).

Bye!

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photo Shanghai WCShanghai

World Cup Shanghai – teams / finals pics

3 May, 2016

For pics of Great Britain’s recurve men at #WCShanghai, click here.

mixed team semi

Tan Ya Ting, Laxmirani Mahji

Deepika Kumari

Wen Chen Hung

Zach Garrett

the view out of my hotel room window, 6.30am

Rick Van Der Ven

this thing

no idea, sorry

KOR-GBR

Maja Jager

Elena Richter

FINALS

KOR ladies

India ladies, warm-up field

Dutch arrows

KOR arrows

Brady, mixed team final

Brady & Khatuna, mixed team final

Chinese Taipei YEAH

Sjef Van Den Berg

Sjef / Zach

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Hoyt Win & Win

bows bows bows

2 May, 2016

Denmark ladies’ bows

If you’ve been reading my blog on a vaguely regular basis you’ll know that I focus more on the sport side of things than the equipment side, partly because I feel that’s well covered elsewhere.

But someone asked nicely, so on Friday morning (team day) I decided to scribble down what every recurve team in this World Cup was using.

I didn’t have time to note individual models, or who was slinging what. Sorry. Had work to do. If it’s Hoyt, it’s very likely a GMX or Prodigy series riser and almost certainly Quattro limbs. If it’s Win & Win, limbs wise it’s increasingly Wiawis but quite likely Inno Ex Power. Win & Win risers were well mixed amongst their older and newer, carbon & aluminium offerings.

This is apropos of nothing, and you can take from it whatever you like.

IMPORTANT:

1) I think I got most of it right but it was done quickly and there’s a likely possibility of some errors. This is for information only, and is not to be relied upon in any way.
2) These are the bows of the three-member teams participating in the team rounds.
3) Don’t forget a large number of archers and teams at this level are sponsored in one way or another, which might in turn affect the ‘result’ in one way or another.
4) Most importantly: this is an observation of what was on the line at the Shanghai World Cup in 2016, not a peer-reviewed study of trends in the archery industry. It may not mean very much at all!

Scroll to the bottom for totals.

Format is: riser / limbs

MEN’S TEAMS

Japan

W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / W&W

Spain

W&W / W&W
Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W

Nederlands

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Russia

Hoyt / Hoyt
MK Korea / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

USA

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Canada

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W

GBR

Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W

Australia

Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W

Korea

Hoyt / MK Korea
W&W / W&W (RXT)
W&W / W&W (RXT)

China

Hoyt / W&W
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / MK Korea

Mexico
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Chinese Taipei
MK Korea / MK Korea
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / MK Korea

India
MK Korea / W&W
Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W

Denmark

MK Korea / W&W
Hoyt / MK Korea
MK Korea / MK Korea

France

Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / Hoyt

Indonesia

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Germany

MK Korea / W&W
Hoyt / MK Korea
MK Korea / MK Korea

WOMEN’S TEAMS

Germany

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Japan

W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W

Indonesia

W&W / W&W
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

China

W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W

Denmark

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / MK Korea

Turkey

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / MK Korea

USA

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W

India

W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W
MK Korea / MK Korea

Russia

Hoyt / Hoyt
MK Korea / W&W
MK Korea / W&W

Colombia

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
(all the same colour!)

Spain

Fivics / Fivics
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / Hoyt

GBR

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
W&W / W&W

Georgia

Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt
Hoyt / Hoyt

Korea

W&W / W&W
W&W / W&W
Hoyt / W&W

TOTAL using Hoyt risers: 53
TOTAL using Hoyt limbs: 44

TOTAL using Win & Win risers: 29
TOTAL using Win & Win limbs: 37

TOTAL using MK Korea risers: 10
TOTAL using MK Korea limbs: 11

TOTAL using Fivics limbs: 1
TOTAL using Fivics risers: 1

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GBR Shanghai

World Cup Shanghai – GBR men

1 May, 2016

It wasn’t quite to be, but the journey was something special. The last time the GBR men’s team made a World Cup final was that glorious moment at Antalya 2012 when the men’s team beat India for gold. This week, the team of Patrick Huston, Kieran Slater and Larry Godfrey got past the Australians and the USA before being stopped – just – by the Korean boys, helped along by the noisiest support on the field. With this trip still regarded as a ‘training week’, flights had been booked home on Saturday, and had to be hastily rearranged for Richard Priestman and the team.

Without the travelling support, in the end they ran into an Indian wall of tens. Despite rallying in the third set, and Larry finding the middle consistently, they couldn’t quite get any points on the board, but even so, the result is telling. Richard Priestman, the head coach had this to say:

“We were really up for it. I think there’s a belief coming back into the team. We’ve worked really hard this winter, a lot of positive talk, and we’ve had great support this morning from the rest of the team. We’ve created the atmosphere where we believe we can win, and it’s paying off. It was a real shame to lose to Korea by just a point, but we know we can beat big teams.”

All pics are © The Infinite Curve. You can share them with a credit, but you’re not allowed to edit them in any way. Thanks!

Patrick Huston

Kieran Slater

on stage

Larry

Patrick on the final field practice range

Team on the final field practice range

supporting

You don’t win anything with ki… oh, you do

Pic of the GBR recurve ladies too, what the hell

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Shanghai

World Cup Shanghai – Days 1&2

27 April, 2016

Some photos from the first couple of days. There was a lot of tension in the air, and I went looking for ‘portraits’, mostly. Little vignettes. Enjoy.

Deepika Kumari.

Song Jiyung

Alejandra Valencia

Muto Hiroki

Lee Seongjun

Christian Weiss

So Chun Ngai

Daniel Areneo

Zach Garrett

Brady Ellison

Aida Roman

Karla Hinojosa

Yuki Hayashi

Still Life #1

Still Life #2

Lin Shih Chia

Kim Chaeyun

Deepika Kumari

arrahs

WA on the town

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Shanghai

World Cup Shanghai 2016 – preview

23 April, 2016

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Yuanshen Stadium, Shanghai. Photo: Sun Alex

The World Cup season is upon us, and it’s very short indeed in this Olympic year. There are three events rather than four: Shanghai starts next week on the 26th April, after that many of the archers will be flying directly to Medellin which begins on the 9th May, with South American qualification places for Rio up for grabs. The last stage before Rio in Antalya on the 12th June will be particularly full of drama as the last Olympic qualifying tournament, with 24 team and individual places available for the big dance. Finally, there will be the showcase grand final in Odense, Denmark in September.

It will be interesting to see who is on form in Shanghai, the familiar opener to the season and the firmest fixture in the World Cup calendar. The qualifying is still at the Yuanshen Stadium, but this year, for the first time, the finals will not be held on the familiar waterfront by the Huangpu river. The finals field is now on the nearby Lujiazui Green, with some spectacular fountains and the archers shooting over water (reminiscent of the old Copenhagen World Cup venue). Shanghai has the biggest crowds of any of the World Cup events, and was a sellout last year. This should be a great edition.

Most teams seem to be sending full-strength first teams, with one noticeable absence – Korea.
They are sending their top recurve cadets, all aged 17-20, for some international experience in Shanghai – although all their senior compounders will be in action. Ukraine also appear to be absent, and the Brazilian first team too – they are deep into internal selection tournaments. The Italian recurves are currently training in South America, last I heard.

I’m getting on a plane tomorrow and going to Shanghai once again to work for World Archery on the comms team, so you can find me over here. Will also be updating you with pictures here. Stay tuned! John.