A last day of eliminations on the field course at Qinglong Lake Park saw the barebow fields of 11 women and 12 men brought down to the final fours at the Chengdu 2025 World Games. As with the recurve competition, the six-target field had the distances altered every two matches to ensure fair competition.
Both defending World Games champions from Bimingham 2022, Cinzia Noziglia and Erik Jonsson were already through to the semifinals by finishing first and second in the women’s and men’s qualification round respectively.
The women’s eliminations in the morning opened with Noziglia and the second-placed archer, France’s Alicia Baumert shooting an exhibition match to choose which half of the draw they wanted to face in the semifinal tomorrow. While this was a low-pressure part of the competition, the scoreline, a massive 80-64 win for the Italian, was ominous for the finals tomorrow.
The first big name to exit was Lina Bjorklund of Sweden, the bronze medallist in 2022 and multiple world field champion. Bjorklund lost 61-63 to the 11th seed, Christine Schäfer of Germany, and admitting struggling with the heat and her shot.
“I’m in ninth place, and that’s not where I thought I would be, but anything can happen with barebow,” said Bjorklund. “You just have to struggle and keep on, even after a bad target.”
In the end, no one would be able to upset the seeding and the semifinals would be the top four women in qualification yesterday: Noziglia, Baumert, Nicky Fairweather and Fawn Girard of the USA.
Girard, the 2024 world field champion, was confident after a dominant performance against Rosemarie Leitner of Germany in the quarterfinal.
“It was stressful,” said Girard, “but I stayed in my process and did what I had to do.”
The American, who posted the third highest score of the day behind Noziglia and Fairweather was bullish about the finals tomorrow. “This is mine. I got it.” said Fawn.
