Archers target decent finish

GUANGZHOU – The Philippines hopes to make a decent finish when Olympian Mark Javier and Delfin Anthony Adriano compete in the Asian Games archery events at the Aoti archery range.

Javier, ranked 209th in the FITA world ranking and who finished sixth in team competition in 2006, failed to go beyond the first round in the Beijing Olympics. But he says he is now putting the frustrations of Beijing behind him as he guns for a better than sixth finish.

The unranked Adriano will be ranged against Olympic and world champions who will gather anew in Guanzhou.

Korea will aim for an eighth consecutive gold medal in the men’s event which runs until Nov. 24, with 114 entries vying for gold in the men’s and women’s individual and team events.

In men’s competition world No. 1 IM Dong Hyun of Korea, the youngest male Olympic archery champion, will be looking for a second consecutive gold medal.

IM was also a men’s team gold medal winner at the 2006 Doha Asian Games and at the 2008 Olympic Games, alongside 28-year-old Lee Chang hwan, who won the men’s individual event at the 2009 World Championships.

Rahul Banerjee of India, a 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games gold medalist, is looking for a first archery gold medal for India and three other experienced Indian archers – Mangal Singh Champia, Tarundeep Rai and Jayanta Talukdar – will be in the running.

Another contender for the gold in the men’s team is Chinese Taipei, headed by veterans Chen Szu Yuan and Kuo ChengWei, both Doha silver medalists.

Each archer shoots 144 arrows over four distances – 90m, 70m, 50m and 30m for men, and 70-60-50-30m for women – with 36 arrows each distance.

Today’s qualification round serves to determine the ranking for the round of 64 in the knockout Olympic round. The remaining four players fight in the semifinals where the winners go to the gold medal round and the losers dispute the bronze.