SHANGHAI, China - The first leg of the Hyundai Archery World Cup continued today with the first two rounds of individual elimination matches and team matches through the semifinals. Archers who scored in the top 8 of each division in yesterday's qualification round were granted byes into the third round of matches, which begin tomorrow.
The U.S. recurve women's team of Mackenzie Brown (Flint, Texas), Khatuna Lorig (Denver, Colorado) and LaNola Shepherd (Lehi, Utah) ranked 11th in qualifications. Ready for a major comeback, the trio took a strong win 6-2 in the 1/8th elimination round against India after splitting the first two sets. They went on to upset No. 3 ranked Japan in the quarterfinals with a 6-0 shut out. In the semifinals, Malaysia, who had upset second seed Chinese Taipei faced the U.S. team and fell 6-0 as the U.S. women continued their dominant hold of the field. They will shoot for gold in the Finals this weekend.
"I think we shot really well as a team today," shared Brown. "We all had a few arrows that weren't great but the team stepped up and helped out which is the best part of having a team. We had a good time today and are going for gold on Sunday!"
After qualifying 14th yesterday, Brown, who will also shoot for mixed team bronze with teammate Zach Garrett (Wellington, Missouri) this weekend, is the sole U.S. woman left in the individual competition after taking a second-round win over Lorig to advance.
The U.S. compound men's team, who qualified first, third and fifth for a first-place team qualification all sat out of the morning competition, but in the afternoon, came together for the team competition.
Top qualifier Reo Wilde (Pocatello, Idaho) commented to World Archery: "We have a pretty good knit group. I would say all in all as a team we're gonna be one of the toughest no matter what. We usually win a lot of events. The hard part is making a U.S. team. We have a talented pool. We were discussing that today, we could probably bring a second full team of four people and that would be our toughest competitor."
The team posted strong scores in windy conditions taking wide-margin wins in the first two rounds. In the semifinal, No. 4 seed India prevailed with a 232-230 win to shoot for gold, while the U.S. men will face France for the bronze.
Bridger Deaton (Pella, Iowa), who qualified 16th yesterday, competed in the compound men's individual matches in the morning and saw a strong 144-139 victory in the second match to advance.
In the same round, U.S. recurve men Jake Kaminski (Gainesville, Florida) and Collin Klimitchek (Victoria, Texas) took their matches to 5-5 ties and both drilled perfect 10s to take the tiebreaker wins and advance to tomorrow's competition. In the team round, Klimitchek joined Garrett and Brady Ellison (Globe, Arizona) but suffered a first round upset 5-3 by Kazakhstan, who went on to earn a spot in the gold final for their first ever shot at a World Cup podium.
Top U.S. compound women's qualifier Jamie Van Natta (Toledo, Ohio) seeded 11th and faced an early upset 142-140 in her first match. Cassidy Cox (Albuquerque, New Mexico) took a strong 147-140 win to continue in the competition, while Danielle Reynolds (Gilbert, Arizona) won a shoot-off to stay in the game with a perfect 10. Lexi Keller (Omro, Wisconsin) will also continue tomorrow. The No. 5 ranked U.S. women's team was upset early in the first round with a 217-221 loss to Iran.
Yesterday afternoon, World Archery announced that NBC Sports has picked up exclusive broadcast rights to the Finals in Shanghai. U.S. fans looking to watch live, should stream through NBCSports.com or the NBC Sports app. Read the full release here.
Competition resumes tomorrow with the remaining individual matches through the semifinals. Complete results from today's competition can be found at www.worldarchery.org. For more, follow USA Archery on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Photo by World Archery.
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