At the latest stage of the 2024 National Tour held at Barnsley Archery Club the sun came out for a big weekend of scores and world class matches.
Sarah Hubbard won her third National Tour stage in a row, beating Evie Finnegan with a perfect 6-0 victory. One more at the British Target Championships and she will have the whole set! On the men’s side, Rene Bekker took the top spot in qualification and the top spot after the head-to-heads by besting Ollie Hicks 7-1, winning his first Tour stage of the season.
Rene said: "It's been a long time coming. I've done a few stages now and I've never quite made it to the final matches, so it's really nice to finally pull it through."
Young archer Johnny Smart won his first ever National Tour stage after beating Roger Castillo-Alquezar in the gold final 6-4. The winner of the women’s category was Louisa Piper, who defeated Natasha Homer in the last match of the day 6-2.
Johnny told us: "It's not really hit me yet I don't think. I'm very happy. When I turned up today, I didn't really expect anything amazing. I've only just come back from the European Youth Championships, so there's no pressure, but I'm really happy with this result."
The final match-up at Barnsley mirrored that of the Surrey gold medal match, seeing Ella Gibson and Izzy Carpenter face off once again. This time it was Ella who took the win with a perfect 150 points to Izzy’s 144. Yu Chak Ngai took this stage’s win in his first season of competing in the National Tour stages, beating Barnsley archer Adam Carpenter 148-145.
Talking about National Tour:The Final, Ella said: "I think there's going to be a lot of really good archers, and I think there's probably going to be some upsets. I mean, we saw today that some of the younger juniors that have been coming up shot some really great scores. Maybe they didn't medal, but we saw 147s and 148s out there; it just takes some time to string those together multiple times, and then we could have one hell of a Final."
The last stage for the 2024 season before The Final will take place in three weeks’ time at the British Target Championships. Follow the scores on 10-11 August to see who the next-stage victors will be.
