IRELAND’S KERRIE LEONARD is set to face 2016 Paralympic champion Jiamin Zhou of China for a place in the last 16 of the women’s individual compound open archery.
Meath native Leonard scored a total of 653/720 in Thursday’s ranking round in Paris, just outside her season’s best of 662, to leave her in 21st place overall.
She will now face Zhou, who finished with a total of 676, when the first head-to-head round gets underway at 8am Irish time on Friday morning.
The head-to-head format sees both archers shoot 15 arrows on an alternating basis, with the highest overall score progressing to the next round.
“It is down on my season’s best,” Leonard said afterwards.
“I wanted to do better but I found myself carrying a lot of tension during the first portion of the competition, not intentionally, but just that idea that every shot has to be perfect because you’re at the Games and want to make sure you leave no stone unturned.
“But you need to let the tension go and get on with the shooting and that’s what I did towards the end and I was actually really happy with the second half.”
She added: “I personally prefer the head-to-heads and hopefully that will show tomorrow.
“The long part of the shoot is today – two and a half hours. I haven’t the luxury of doing that huge endurance training of shooting arrow after arrow because throughout my entire archery career I’ve been working fulltime as well. That has ramped up significantly in the last few months but you’re dealing with girls here who do it every single day, that’s their fulltime gig.
“Endurance shooting is a lot different than that head-to-head match. There’s only five ends of three arrows – 15 arrows – so from that perspective it suits me better to compete in that way.
“When you’re head-to-head with somebody, it’s me and against you. You can see the whites of their eyes!”
Turkey’s Oznur Cure Girdi set a new world record of 704 points — with 56 10s from her 72 arrows — to top the ranking round, just one point ahead of India’s Sheetal Devi.
