Australian archers aim for youth world championships
07 Jul 2009
Five promising Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) archers will compete in the Youth Archery World Championships held in Ogden, Utah in the United States, from 12 to 19 July 2009.
AIS archers Elisa Barnard, Alice Ingley, Ben Nott, Ryan Tyack and Taylor Worth make up the youth team bound for the United States this Friday.
Although the AIS squad is young, they boast plenty of experience competing at the national and world level. This year marks 18-year-old Ryan Tyack’s third youth championships — in 2006, he won the gold medal in the men’s individual event and last year he teamed up with Taylor Worth to win gold in the men’s doubles event.
Other members of the squad have competed at previous youth world championships, including Ben Nott and Elisa Barnard, who was ranked 11th in 2008.
Sixteen-year-old Alice Ingley is the newcomer to the AIS team, but she has already impressed archery fans with a silver medal in the women’s recurve at the senior National Archery Championships, held earlier this year in Adelaide.
Australian elite archery is currently undergoing significant change with the appointment of former AIS scholarship holder 2000 Olympic Games gold medallist Simon Fairweather as the national archery coach. Coached by Fairweather, AIS archers performed well at the national training camp in June.
Following the world championships, the AIS’s junior archers will rejoin the rest of the squad in preparing to qualify for the New Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games.
