Archery - Competition
The 2008 AIS Archery International
In July/August 2007 the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Archery program extended an invitation to select members of the world's recurve archery nations to participate in its 2008 AIS Archery International. National teams from some of the world's top ranked countries, including Korea, Great Britain, the U.S.A., Malaysia, France and Chinese-Taipei, accepted the invitation and arrived in Canberra during mid January in preparation for the event.
The International was loosely divided into two phases, a training and assessment opportunity in the first 5-6 days (18-23 January) followed by a competition period (23-26 January). The competition was a 72 arrow ranking round conducted on the AIS Outdoor Synthetic Pitch followed by Elimination and Finals Matchplay on Canberra Stadium.
Korea once again proved the team to beat filling all individual female and two individual male places as well as having two teams of each gender win medals. Irrespective, AIS archer Ha Neul (Sky) Kim maintained the fantastic form that saw him with the 2007 Olympic Test Event and was able to defeat Lee Seung Yong (KOR) to win gold in the individual men's discipline for Australia. Former AIS Scholar and Beijing Olympic aspirant Matt Gray also featured in the medal matches but lost to Im Dong Hyun in the bronze medal match.