UK Student Archery Association

International outlook... mixed [09/Jul/12]

Let's start with the good news. From 2019 onwards, archery will become a compulsory sport at the Summer Universiade, or World University Summer Games. For a sport to make the transition from guest sport to compulsory sport, it must take part in three consecutive Universiades. Although archery will not be present at 2013 (Kazan, Russia), it will be at both the 2015 (Gwangju, S. Korea) and 2017 (Taipei, Taiwan) events and it has been announced that in 2019 (venue TBC) archery will make the leap, see FITA and FISU websites.

FITA have been working hard to get this to happen and archery's "promotion" to the top table of student sport should be welcomed. Well done also to taekwondo who will become a compulsory sport in 2017.

The 2012 World Uni Champs have just finished in Cordoba, Spain, but there were no British archers present, which is desperately disappointing. There was also no British representation at the 2011 Summer Universiade, which had archery as a guest sport and as archery will not feature in 2013 Summer Universiade, an entire generation of British student archers have completely missed out on the chance to shoot at these events. Archery's jump to the Universiade is somewhat hollow if British archers remain absent from these events.

As a result of archery's inclusion in the Universiade, the separate World University Archery Championships will be discontinued. The last two editions will be held in 2014 (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) and 2016 (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia).

Denied the opportunity to cheer on some Brits, we can live vicariously through the Irish. Recurve Darren Wallace (NUI Galway) and compound John Smith (Dublin IT) shot for Ireland in Cordoba. Both men comfortably top scored in the Irish IVL this year in their respective divisions. This is a third such appearance for John Smith after 2010 and 2011, whilst Darren Wallace was making his debut at this level.

Wallace qualified 16th out of 40 gents recurves with a double 70m score of 638, but lost to 17th ranked Daniel Ciornei (Romania) in the round of 32. Smith qualified 17th out of 25 gents compounds with a double 50m score of 674. In his knock out round, he finished level with David Montiel Villanueva (Mexico), before winning the shoot-off 10-9 - the pair also finished level after the ranking round. In the last 16, Smith faced top seed Paul Titscher (Germany) but was comfortably beaten.

Individual winners were recurves Kim Bongman and Park Seayane (both Korea) and compounds Daniel Suter (USA) and Kristina Berger (Germany). Korea won the men's, women's and mixed recurve team events, beating Japan, Taiwan and Poland respectively. The USA won women's and mixed compound team beating Malaysia and Germany in their respective finals, but lost to Italy in the men's.

See the Internationals section and the results in full from the Cordoba 2012 website.