THE MIRACLE OF ANTALYA

Great Britain’s World Cup results in the past decade have not been spectacular, certainly compared with the usual peers. GBR had not taken a compound women’s gold medal since 2010, when Nicky Hunt won the stage in Shanghai. The women’s recurve team last took a stage in 2008 and the men’s team in 2012. The last individual recurve gold was Simon Terry in 2009. But for Ella Gibson and James Mason’s mixed team triumph in Berlin in 2019, the cupboard would be relatively bare.

That all changed in April 2022, when an apparently relaxed British delegation took compound women’s gold, women’s recurve team gold, mixed team silver and individual women’s recurve gold – their greatest-ever haul from a single World Cup by some margin, in the 15-year history of the event. Three of the medals involved Bryony Pitman, the 25-year-old who made ninth place in Tokyo and seems to still have that gear engaged. It was a spectacular performance, especially on the recurve side, and will no doubt drive significant confidence. Remarkably, it was also achieved without a head coach in place and against high-level opposition (minus the Koreans). How did it happen? We’ll be finding out in some future issues of Bow.

See you on the shooting line,