The 18-year-old archer Roua Ben Abdelkader topped the recurve women field in qualifications at the Abidjan 2025 African Archery Championships.
Ben Abdelkader beat the likes of Paris 2024 Olympian Fatoumata Sylla [582] to the pole position at Stade Robert Champroux de Marcory gaining a score of 610 across 72 arrows.
The Tunisian was in fact one of only three recurve women archers in Côte d’Ivoire that dropped a score above 600 with home favourite Prisca Kossia and Kuki Anwar of Kenya getting 605 and 603 respectively.
The hot humidity in Côte d’Ivoire may have prohibited the 17 participants in the category to break Kirstin Lewis‘ African record of 639 but young Ben Abdelkader will not care an inch.
The hot humid temperatures rose today- just over 30 degrees celsius at its peak – as did she in only her second international competition.
Her first was the Nabeul 2023 African Archery Championships in her home country of Tunisia where she was within touching distance of grabbing a maiden individual medal, losing to Jana Ali [2-6] in the semifinals and then former teammate Rihab Elwalid [2-6] – with whom she won silver with in the women’s team event in Nabeul and now represents Qatar – in the bronze medal match.
Ben Abdelkader did that at 16 years of age and although Thursday’s score gives her the best chance possible to reach the final this time round in Abidjan, there is still work to be done to see if she has matured on the shooting line.
