45th World Outdoor Archery Championships - Ulsan 2009
Park Sung-hyun from Daylife Publishers
Back in December of last year I wrote about the Korean city of Ulsan, out on the east coast, focusing on the whaling industry and a couple of the local sights related to it. One other aspect to the city that was brought up is that it is hosting the 45th World Outdoor Archery Championships -- I thought that they weren't starting until mid to late September, but it turns out the championships are going on now and run from 30 August to 9 September. Anyone familiar with the Olympics in general or archery in particular will know that Korea typically fields very strong teams in recurved bow events, and the current standings of this year's event show that the women's team is doing quite well:
Women's Recurved Bow Team Qualification (9/3)
1. South Korea
2. China
3. Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)
Women's Recurved Bow Individual Qualification (9/3)
1. KWAK Ye Ji (Korea)
2. YUN Ok-Hee (Korea)
3. JOO Hyun-Jung (Korea)
Women's Compound Bow Team Qualification (9/2)
1. South Korea 4107
2. Russia 4069
3. USA 4060
Women's Compound Bow Individual Qualification (9/2)
1. OCHOA Linda (Mexico) 1385
2. LOGINOVE Albina (Russia) 1380
3. MIKALA Melanie (Germany) 1377
Men's Compound Bow Team Qualification (9/2)
1. USA 4179
2. Russia 4130
3. El Salvador 4115
Men's Compound Bow Individual Qualification (9/2)
1. WILDE Reo (USA) 1401
2. COUSINS Dave (USA) 1392
3. JIMENEZ Jorge (El Salvador) 1390
The event is taking place at Ulsan's Munsu International Archery Field (Ulsan Sports Park, 855 Ok-dong, Nam-gu, TEL: +82-52-226-5436~7) located across from the Munsu World Cup Stadium Car Park Cinema. If I'm not mistaken, the bus from Gangnam (고속버스터미날) makes a stop near the World Cup Stadium on its way to the city center. (Not true)
According to the archery championship's tourism page the Munsu International Archery Field was built in 2004 and has a 25,000-pyeong main field capable of holding 240 athletes competing against one another at once. The stands hold 1,000 spectators, though I'm not sure what the attendance figures have been like to date. There are 80 nations participating in this edition of the biannual event and this weekend will see the 1/64 - 1/4 elimination rounds for Compound Individual and Recurve Individual, plus the final match for Recurve & Compound Mixed Team Elimination. The Recurve and Compound Team Finals will take place on Tuesday (8 September) while the Recurve and Compound Individual Final will be held on Wednesday (9 September).
As you can see from some of the scores above, there are times when the difference between places is only a point or two. During the 2008 Archery World Cup in Lausanne, Poland's Justyna Mospinek beat Korea's Park Sung-Hyun in the final by a score of 109 to 107. Assuming I wake up early enough to catch an early morning bus to Ulsan, I'm looking forward to checking out this event ...
Justyna Mospinek from Daylife Publishers