TRIPLE Olympian Naomi Folkard came away from the very popular annual International Indoor Archery Meeting in Berlin with a silver medal.
Folkard made the pre-Christmas trip to Germany to compete against some of the world’s best recurve ladies and she had to fight hard to take the silver medal.
She shot 576 for the qualification round (5 dozen arrows at a small 3 spot face over 18metres).
This brought her a third place ranking behind Lisa Unruh (Germany) and Tatiana Segina (Russia), who both scored 584.
Other top internationals including Justyna Mospinek (Poland) and Karina Winter (Germany) were hard on Folkard’s heels.
The standard of shooting throughout the head-to-head matches was superb.
Folkard only dropped 4 points in her first match against Alina Valentin (Germany) to win in four sets 6-2.
This brought her up against Johanna Gullroos (Sweden) and again Folkard won by the same score to set up a tough encounter Winter in a match which went to 5 sets, but the German lady could not match two perfect ends of 30 from Folkard.
It was therefore Folkard who went through 7-3 to the semi-final, another hard fought match against Paulina Tyszko (Poland).
After 5 sets, three of which were drawn, the ladies were tying 5-5 but in a single arrow shoot-off Folkard shot a 10 to the Pole’s 9, giving her the match 6-5 and the opportunity to shoot for gold against Veronika Haidn-Tschalova (Germany).
This again was a five set battle with excellent shooting by both, but Tschalova finished on top 6-4, with a total arrow score of 143 to Folkard’s 142. Tyszko took bronze.
Folkard said: “Although I wanted gold, I am pleased with my silver medal. I shot well in some really tough matches.”
