Archers target Games

By Mark Etheridge

Western Province’s Karen Hultzer and Northern Gauteng’s Graeme Lindner are two of our archers targeting an Olympic dream and are one step closer after last weekend’s competition.

Marks Park Club in Johannesburg was the venue for an Olympic round competition and Hultzer and Lindner were the two archers best placed to grab a possible spot on Team SA for the London Olympics later this year.

The competition format was that the top-scoring men’s and women’s archer would compete for a scholarship to attend a training camp in Rabat, Morocco in the first week of March. Rules were that irrespective of class, the top-scorers would win the scholarship and the higher scoring of the two would also win a scholarship for his or her coach.

Lindner ended up shooting a top score of 585 and Hultzer was just 18 points less with 567.

The duo will now head off to the Continental Games in Rabat between 11-16 March. Should they take first place in their respective categories (both recurve in this instance) they will secure an Olympic qualification. The next step would be for the archery federation to approach Olympic governing body SASCOC for an opportunity to participate in the Olympics.

The Rabat competition serves as the all-important continental qualifier and the South African duo know that they are up against it. A total of 23 countries will be fighting for the right to have their archers represented in London and Egypt are favourites, followed by Libya.