The Chinese recurve women put themselves in a good position to win a gold medal at home after fighting into the finals of the season-opening Hyundai Archery World Cup in Shanghai.
Buoyed by a cheering crowd, the second seeded team of An Qixuan, Li Jiaman and Yang Xiaolei rallied from two set points down to win in a tiebreak over Germany at the Yuanshen Stadium on Thursday morning.
They will face a rookie team of Korea who sailed into the finals with a straight-set win over Indonesia.
“We don’t want to think too much about winning or losing, we just want to meet them [Korea] again and again,” said An.
In a thrilling semifinal, China showed hopes of recovery only in the third set, before they went to winning the fourth 56-54 drawing the match and forcing a shoot-off. The teams were tied again 29 each, but China was decided the winner owing to arrow closest to the centre.
“We did our best and the crowd cheering really motivated us to fight back,” added Li, the Nanjing 2014 Olympic Games gold medallist.
Seeded third, Germany has two members of the reigning world champion team in its ranks, Katharina Bauer and Charline Schwarz, who shoot alongside Elisa Tartler in Shanghai.
“Germany are a good and strong team, so we started carefully and made the changes accordingly,” said an ecstatic Kwon Yonghak, the Chinese coach. “We focused on our game and that was the key.”
The second seeded team overcame Chinese Taipei and USA, while Germany beat the Netherlands and Mexico, in the previous elimination rounds.
Top seed Korea is led by Lim Sihyeon, who topped the recurve women’s individual qualifying field on Wednesday with 683 points. Jeon Hunyoung and Nam Suhyeon are making their World Cup debuts this week.