Canada’s Recurve Men to shoot for the World Championship Bronze Medal Sunday
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – A successful second half of the 2017 season for Canada now culminates in a Bronze Medal team match between Canada’s Brian Maxwell, Crispin Duenas and Hamilton Nguyen and Korea’s Im Dong Hyun, Oh Jin Hyek, and Kim Woojin. After moving through the draw in Mexico City with wins over the Netherlands and Kazakhstan, Canada was only narrowly defeated by France with a shoot off in the semi finals, while Korea lost the other semi final to Italy. Both Italy and France will contest for the World Championship Gold Medal match following the Canada versus Korea Bronze Medal encounter.
Canada is finishing a long season here in Mexico City, which started with a multi-nation training camp in California in February, with excellent recent performances, including a podium finish by Duenas at the Berlin World Cup and a Top 5 finish for first year Cadet Ben Lee only 2 weeks ago at the World Archery Youth Championship in Rosario, Argentina. At the 2017 World Championship, Canada is now taking history by qualifying for its first ever recurve team final in the modern World Archery Championships.
During the individual competition, Crispin Duenas also performed brilliantly, losing only two sets through five matches, and coming agonizingly close to competing on finals day, if it wasn’t for a narrow 4-6 quarterfinal loss to Im Dong Hyun. The match was the highest scoring quarterfinal with a 143 total score for Duenas compared to the Korean’s 144 total score. After winning his first 4 matches 6-0, 6-0, 7-1, 6-0, the only 2 sets Duenas lost showed him posting a score of 29 compared to a perfect 30 for Im Ding Hyun. “Nobody likes losing, but hats off to my opponent for posting 30s in those 2 sets. I think I competed well during these Worlds with a 6th overall finish, but now it's back to the focus on our team's performance and Sunday's match. I think we are all working collectively amongst the staff and athletes to optimize our opportunities on the road to Tokyo 2020, and this is an important stepping stone”, suggested Duenas, who added, “a lot of things have happened to move the Canadian Recurve program forward over the past 3 years and I think we are beginning to see some of the benefits, including that incredible Top 5 cadet finish by Ben Lee down in Argentina, and now this performance by our team.”
National coach Shawn Riggs, who coached Duenas and Lee to their recent successes in Germany and Argentina was clear about Sunday’s opportunity by suggesting that the opportunity is real and we are looking for a strong performance on Sunday to reach the podium. This is purely about Canada and the quality of our team’s preparation. We will be ready and are looking forward to a great match on Sunday. "
Sunday’s 12:48 pm EST match will be broadcast live at the following link:
The entire finals schedule can be found at the following link:
https://worldarchery.org/competition/14538/mexico-city-2017-world-archery-championships – /
For additional information, contact Mary MacDonald or visit www.archerycanada.ca
About Archery Canada
Archery Canada is the National Sport Organization responsible for the promotion and development of the timeless sport of archery in a safe and ethical manner. Archery Canada supports the achievement of high performance excellence in archery in all categories and the development of a national archery infrastructure to promote archery participation across Canada in cooperation with the Provincial/Territorial Archery Associations.
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