News feature
The biannual World Championships blew everyone away in the Netherlands
The 2019 Hyundai World Archery Championships in 's-hertogenbosch, Netherlands was by some distance the biggest major international archery tournament ever held. The total runners were 590 from 88 countries – 200 recurve men, 153 recurve women, 139 compound men and 98 compound women – and it also served as the main Olympic
qualifier for teams and a handful of individuals. (It was preceded by the Para Championships, held in the same spot. We decided to give that its own space, so Bow will have a full report about that in the next issue.)
For many nations and squads, the Olympic places was the real driver for attendance. In recurve archery, gaining an spot and then competing for your country remains the reference point for the rest of the world – and also, for gaining funding from central government. Coming home with three spots for Tokyo is, on a national level, at least as important as winning a championship medal, and in terms of a career, often more so. Many international teams stayed on in Europe after the recent
Antalya World Cup specifically to prepare for this. The competition saw a colourful line-up of archers from nations rarely seen in international archery including Chad, Tonga, Qatar, Guyana, Sudan, the Virgin Islands, Fiji, San Marino, Namibia – and even a full compound team from the Faroe Islands.
The huge numbers made even qualifying for the championship a major task. With 200 recurve men and just 104 places in the main draw available, a lot of people's championships ended very early indeed. For the Korean men's team, there was drama from the start, as their youngest star Lee Woo Seok was ill and spent official practice in a local hospital, being scanned for all sorts of things. Qualifying a full team is so vital that the Koreans had another athlete, Bae Jae Hyun, sprint for the airport with his bow on the Sunday. He was apparently through security and sitting in the lounge when the call came that Woo Seok was well enough to shoot – and shoot he did. Looking pale and drawn, he still managed to put away a score of 696 to finish on top of the men's recurve pile.
The cut to make the men's matchplay stage of the tournament was an astonishing 645 points – four years ago it was 624. There was a six-way shoot-off for the last spot, which Portugal’s Tiago Matos won. Victims of the cut included former Olympic champion Victor Ruban. The top recurve men’s seed at the last world championships scored 676 – here, in good weather, 12 men went over 680. The women's was equally strong, in still conditions, Kang Chae Young managed to beat her record from last year by a single point, with 692. In compound qualification, which had less pressure of numbers but every major international archer attending, the tables were topped by Kim Jongho with 714 and Tanja Jensen with 708.
The first part of the week is all about recurve teams, and there were some high-profile casualties in the first match including the USA women and the German and Russian men. The stage was set for Wednesday's team match which perms eight teams from the final sixteen in each gender. Winning it meant winning three spots for Tokyo (for the nation, rather than individually). The bright and still weather of the first few days suddenly turned extremely
nasty in the morning and most teams had to practice in torrential rain under dark skies. Things cleared up – a little – by the afternoon. The tension ratcheted up for three practice ends, as most nations assembled a noisy rail of supporters behind the field. The critical matches - men first, then women - were held in a deafening roar of support with athletes being far more demonstrative than usual. After the fist pumping and shouting had ended, it looked like the end of a football World Cup knockout stage, with jumping up and down and screaming and people curled into balls on the floor of tents.
When the dust had settled, China, Chinese Taipei, Great Britain and Korea had secured full quotas, winning spots in both the men’s and women’s team events at Tokyo 2020. Australia, India, Kazakhstan and the Netherlands won men’s team places, and Belarus, Germany, Russia and Ukraine won women’s team places. The major losers included France, Italy and Mexico, who walked away empty-handed.
As the knockout competition progressed, individual spots were awarded to Ruman Shana of Bangladesh, Khairul Anuar Mohamad of Malaysia, Mauro Nespoli of Italy, Brady Ellison of the USA, Alexandra Mirca of Moldova, Maja Jager of Denmark, Alejandra Valencia of Mexico and Christine Bjerendal of Sweden - the last three in a tiny shootdown competition on the Friday morning.
On finals day the competition, mostly held on a cramped rugby field called The Dukes in a park in the south of the city, shifted across to
the main square of 's-hertogenbosch next to the cathedral. A stand for thousands of spectators and a giant VIP area for the great and good of the town (and a who's who of international archery in the past few decades) had been set up – and luckily the weather stayed almost perfect.
Compound Saturday was a little short on really thrilling competition, it has to be said, but was an entertaining day of archery. The men's final was unusual, in that neither archer was a pro, with James Lutz arriving at the championships ranked 24th in the world, and young Norwegian Anders Faugstad 70th. From low qualifications, both rose through the field to make the last two. The last time a Norwegian archer contested a world championship title was in 2005 in Madrid when the legendary Morten Boe lost to the equally legendary Morgan Lundin. This time, Morten Boe was behind the scope as a coach to Faugstad. However, the Norwegian, so confident in the knockout rounds, seemed to blink on his first big stage.
THE MEN'S COMPOUND FINAL WAS UNUSUAL, IN THAT NEITHER ARCHER WAS A FULL-TIME PRO