 Near miss for China
By Zhao Rui (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-12 08:53 China's archers were again in the medals yesterday when the men's team achieved their best ever result by taking bronze at the Olympic Archery Range. Their performance followed on the heels of Sunday's silver medal in the women's team event. Chinese archers - Xue Haifeng, Jiang Lin and Li Wenquan - won many hard fought victories during the day. But in the semifinal, the crack South Korean team of world No 1 Im Dong-hyun, Park Kyung-mo and Lee Chang-hwan proved too much. The Koreans then went on to beat Italy in the final gold medal event. "The bronze medal is already something out of my expectations," said Xue last night. "It is a little bit of a pity that we didn't dethrone the Koreans in the semis when we had some really good chances, but you have to be realistic that there is a wide gap between us and them." China had an impressive campaign with a cluster of victories over Great Britain, Russia, and then a 222-219 win over Ukraine in the third place fight for bronze. Until yesterday, the host country had never gone beyond the quarterfinals in any major event. It lost in the preliminary round at the Athens Games four years ago, and its goal in Beijing had been just a modest top six finish. "There is a lot of emotion today," said Jiang. "We have worked really hard over the years. We go into every tournament with nobody counting us favorites. The wins today give us a lot of confidence, they prove what we've been doing is right." (China Daily 08/12/2008 page12) |
