A small disaster evolved here today until it got to the stage that in one part of the course people could not climb up the hill anymore. Gerard walked the blue course, where compound archers shot their match today. It was slippery, but not extremely bad. However, the amount of additional rain that fell today made progressing through this course worse. Reinier walked the white course and that was even more slippery, as of the beginning of the day. Barebow archers shot their marked round here and they progressed like a freight train through the course. The first barebow archers got back at 3.30pm, whilst we started late this morning at 10.30am. That was their luck, there are about 80 of them but they finished quickly and before the bulk of the rain fell today.

After completing the blue course Gerard felt guilty about not having pictures from the recurve archers today and decided to give the yellow course a go. The yellow course was, at the end of the day, just insane. The question was not how the footing was, rather how deep the footing was. And most of the times it was ankle deep in muddy water, and sometimes even worse. Around target 9 it was extremely slippery, but in the back of the course at around target 17 it was just amazingly hard to get around the course. Streams in the forest and a waterfall in the quarry at target 16. We spoke with someone who has been shooting field around the courses here since 1980 and never ever saw it as bad as today.

Early in the morning Barbara McCusker had a fall in the white course. She was able to walk up to the ambulance and was driven to the hospital for a check. In the yellow course shooting had to be stopped today when Dawn Lowther had to be stretchered out of the field. She fell really nasty and could not move up or down the hill. In the blue course people also had to stop shooting to make the evacuation of Dawn safely possible. With the time that took, the additional rain that fell in that period, and being in a forest that was getting darker by the minute at dusk, and two archers already hospitalized, the organization decided to stop the competition. Because of that, some 30 recurve archers could not finish their round, and a few compound archers had problems as well. The party responsible for the results during these World Championships (Meteksan) is comparing the scores entered in the PDA's during the round with the wet scorecards handed in and are figuring out what targets have been completed by all archers today before they are able to present today's score.

With pathways being abused by the archers for a day, and the amount of water in the forest soil, the courses are very hard to traverse, even unsafe at places. Therefore the organization first decided to shoot half a course tomorrow (12 targets), and later decided to cancel tomorrow's match altogether. Normally, the results after day one would be used to decide the cut and progression to the elimination rounds. This World Championship however, is also the qualification for the World Games next year. Everyone would love to be able to shoot another qualification day in Wales to have a proper (two day) score for the World Games qualification. However, the elimination rounds have been planned at the same venue as today. Judges are working out the options tomorrow morning in cooperation with the local organization to see what is possible here. We need to wait to find out what will be happening these coming days.