Individual finals

09:00 Warming-up

10:00 Semi finals - 4 targets - known distances

14:00 Bronze medal matches - 4 targets - known distances

15:00 Gold medal matches - 4 targets - known distances

17:00 Medal ceremony individual competition

20:00 Closing party

Impression of the day:

The castle around which we shot the finals today has a park around it, with many big trees (A sequoia, Douglas Pine, a huge chestnut tree, etc) and they provided some nice shade. We had some very close matches in the semi finals. Like the one between Chris White and Dejan Sitar. We spoke with Chris after the semis, and he said he was lucky to have shot this course already during the team event. Target one, a 55 meter target, was falling a bit low yesterday. He added a meter today and had an excellent centered group on it. Dejan was high, then low, then centered. Chris managed to keep the advantage and went through to the gold medal match.

The pause between the semifinals and finals was nearly two hours. That was way too long, if you ask us. We asked Chris how he kept focused. He said he would take his mind of the final match for an hour and a half, and then, 30 minutes before the finals would actually start, begin worrying about this match against Morgan Lundin. They have shot against each other before on a European Field tournament, in Vagney 2003. Morgan won there, but Chris said in the intermezzo: "that would probably be the last European were Morgan has won from me :)".

In the ladies barebow division, it was a tight match between Eleonara Strobbe from Italy against French archer Christine Gauthé. And Christine, like yesterday, was again facing a shoot off situation at this target. She was very happy winning that shoot off, and went for the Gold medal match against Austrian Blankbogen schutzer Andrea Raigel.

In the finals Dejan Sitar from Slovenia came to the last (fourth) target in his bronze medal match with a perfect score up until then (18 on all targets). He had to wait quite some time to finish his match against Hungarian archer Tibor Ondrik for the bronze medal. The wind picked up on the 60 meter target, he was compensating for it by aiming to the right side of the yellow, but the arrow went straight were he pointed it. So, no perfect final round, but still a very good conclusion of his tournament and gaining the bronze.

The match between Italian recurve archer Michele Frangilli and the German Sebastian Rohrberg was a very tight match. Sebastian arrived at the final with a two point lead and the gentlemen tied the match at the last target. Three shoot offs were necessary to decide the match, in favor of Michele. Sebastian added to me after the match: "when it is so tight, I do not mind to lose. We were both shooting well until the very end. I was happy with my shooting today, even the last arrow of this tournament".

The French juniors did well in the finals, with gold for Raphaël Petit-Menuesa and bronze for Lucas le Baut. Kalle Puman from Sweden had silver in the Barebow junior division. The other French medal was the silver medal from Christine Gauthé, also in Barebow. The Austrian Andrea Raigel was grouping her arrows very well this afternoon, and claimed the gold there.

Another European Field Archery tournament came to an end. I am rushing this article in, just before the banquet of tonight. I was not able to think back a lot about the final result here in Champagnac. My impression however was that the Italians gained less medals than I expected, and the Swedes more than I predicted. But it is hard to put that down as a final thought without being able to check the numbers. Right now, we all hit the showers and will wave the archers goodbye. It was fun watching them in action.