Nanjing hammered out 216 points to ease through Jinan, winning women’s team archery at the Chinese City Games here on Wednesday.
Nanjing outperformed Jinan 216-201 to take the women’s team victory in rain. The mark of 216 is six away from national record of 222 points.
Qidao shot down 203 points against Xiamen’s 196 to wrap up the bronze medal.
Nanjing team is composed of three top archers Tu Yingwen, Zhang Yunlu and Qi Na.
Tu is a national team archer; Zhang was the silver medallist of women’s individual at the Games; Qi led the preliminaries but withered in elimination.
“We maintained consistency in the final. There was no fluctuation, so we had an easy win,” said Zhang. “It’s so cold today and we need to wear camlet coat to warm up, otherwise we should do better.”
Nanjing finished second in women’s team in national champions tournament last year.
Nanjing’s coach Ba Yongshan took the victory as something normal. “We are much better in overall competence than Qingdao, so the result is within my expectation,” said Ba.
“We next need to gear up for the 2009 national games and I hope the other two athletes can be jigged into national team. They trained very hard and complained a lot for my strictness, but now I think they should thank me.”
Nanjing built up 11-point lead after 12 arrows in 109-98 and further to expand their advantage to 12 points in the mark of 18 arrows. Jinan was not good enough to overturn Nanjing in the last six attempts, losing by 15 points in 201-216.
“It’s very cold, so I shot not very good in some arrows. Thanks to my teammates, they covered up some gap when I made mistakes,” said 16-year-old Qi. “There was no feeling of pressure in the final for we believe we are stronger.”
In the third-place match, individual titlist Huang Wanping spearheaded Xiamen to half-way lead in 101-96, but Xiamen faded away following next six arrows, trailing six points in 146-152 to Qingdao. It’s Qingdao that pocketed the bronze in 203-196.
(Source: en.beijing2008.cn)
