Archery
Folkard is the master

LEAMINGTON recurve archer Naomi Folkard continued her warm-up for the London Olympics by winning her division in the UK Masters which was held at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire at the weekend.

The competition was held over two days, with a FITA 70m for recurves, followed by a head-to-head knockout competition and a 12 dozen arrow ladies/gents FITA on Sunday.

For each of the three elements of the event archers were given points according to their finishing position and the archer with the least points was the overall winner.

The cold, wet and windy conditions proved difficult but Folkard, training hard for the Olympics and fresh back from winning a silver medal in the European Championships in Holland, was in top form.

She scored 662 for the FITA 70m, an average of 9.1 per arrow, and just one point off her own national record. This put her well ahead of Jeanetta Braun (Brent Valley), second with 614.

She stormed through all her head-to-head matches, beating Cherry Lyne (B of the Deans) in the gold medal match 6-2.

In the traditional 12 dozen arrow FITA round over four distances, she finished on 1,283 points, ahead of Lyne 1217 and Braun 1168.

In the overall event she accumulated the minimum number of points to finish as UK Masters champion.

In addition she won all six of the ladies’ recurve trophies for the event, the Ogden trophy for the overall winner, four distance trophies together with the long metric trophy.

It was a highly successful weekend and another confidence booster for Folkard ahead of the forthcoming Olympics.

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