Since the World Championships in 2019, Canada has had its sights set on earning a Paralympic quota place to be present in Tokyo for the Paralympic Games. With her performance at this week’s Continental Qualifier tournament taking place in Monterrey, MEX, veteran archer, Karen Van Nest has secured a place for Canada, claiming a silver medal in the process.

“It has been a very exciting, emotional day,” said Duncan Crawford, Canada’s Head Coach, Paralympic Team. “Karen fought hard in the final, falling just short of the Gold. But, in doing so qualified for the 2021 Paralympics at the end of this summer. We are all so proud of, and happy for her.”

The past year, with restrictions in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the training environment and the ability to come together for training or competition has been extremely limited, especially for our teams. Every other Nation that was in attendance at the Tournament have had the opportunity to train outside, at full distance, year-round. Karen has not even been able to train at 50m outdoors since last fall. These were just a few of the challenges that had to be overcome to get to this result.

Karen advanced to the elimination rounds after the first day of qualification on Tuesday, and due to her qualification ranking, was automatically seeded into the second set of elimination matches. Facing her first match against Paula Silveira  of MEX in the quarter final, Karen won 138-115. Though the next match was tighter, Karen took the win 136-133 against  Brazilian Anne Pacheco Xavier to advance to the Gold medal match where she faced Chilie’s Mariana Zuñiga. Zuñiga ultimately took the gold, winning 144-135.

“I have to say I’m relieved and grateful for my success today, despite the obvious challenges around training through the Canadian winter compounded with COVID challenges,” said Karen following her qualification today. “I’m really proud of my achievement and excited to be representing Canada again at the Paralympics.”