Netherlands deliver as Great Britain surprise

The team eliminations at the first of the year’s Hyundai Archery World Cup stages got underway in blazing sunshine on Friday morning in Shanghai. With many teams testing likely line-ups for Rio, there was a great deal at stake. 

The biggest surprise of the day was the Great Britain men’s team, who took down a shaky Australia before a surprise defeat of the number one seeded USA men’s team, capping an uneasy week for the States recurve team. The Brits drilled seven straight 10s in the middle to win the match in three sets. 

They then faced a youthful Korean cadet team for a place in the gold medal match – and almost made it, losing by just a single point. 

“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 these big teams,” said Richard Priestman, head coach of Great Britain.

“This was really a training week for us. We need to medal in Nottingham or Antalya, and it’s going to get us used to the finals setup, get used to that atmosphere.”

The Netherlands lived up to their second seeding, taking an advantage against Russia at 2-2, when one of the Russians dropped an arrow into the two ring.

The lucky break seemed to energise the team, and they strung together the 10s to go through. The Dutch men then brushed aside a lacklustre Japan to face the experienced Indian team. Despite going down 4-0, the Netherlands regrouped to force a shoot-off - which they promptly won with three 10s.

Afterwards, coach Ron van der Hoff said: “We’ve been practicing a lot of single arrow stuff. I even lost a bet with Mitch this week when I offered him 10 euros if he could shoot a 10 on demand.”

“We’ve worked all year, so we’ll do just a short practice to be away from the hotel tomorrow. We shoot arrows, but we don’t really practice. We’ve done all that. We just need the competition to be really sharp. Sjef has done really well, which gives everyone confidence.”

The Netherlands will face a youthful Korean side who have not been as relentlessly consistent as the senior team, but nevertheless seem capable of putting arrows in the middle.

The competition went closer to form on the women’s side. The Korean cadets took three points, but couldn’t beat the much more experienced Chinese Taipei team, who ended up with the other three top seeds in the last four.

India and Germany both won shoot-offs to face each other in the semis, with India taking the honours 5-3 after an uncharacteristic six from the Germans in the last end. Chinese Taipei thrashed World Archery Champion Russia 6-0 to set up an intriguing pair of finals matches on Sunday morning.