African para-archery was represented by two athletes in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games: Shaun ANDERSON, South Africa in the Men W1 category, and Aliou DRAME, Senegal in the Compound Men Open category.
The ranking round results saw very good scores in almost all the categories with new Paralympic Records beaten like the one by the Chinese AI Xinliang (CMO) who scored 709 points out of a possible 720! Our archers, too, did a good job as was the case with ANDERSON who seeded 9th out of 13 and scored his season’s best realizing 638 points. Senegal’s DRAME was no exception as he was ranked 28 out of 32 and scored 672 points realizing his personal’s best result so far.
During the elimination rounds, RSA’s ANDERSON created the surprise beating Turkey’s AYDIN, who seeded 8th in the ranking round, by just one point 133 – 132 and advanced to the quarterfinals. He lost 136 – 134 after an outstanding performance against China’s ZHANG who seeded first in the ranking round and has just beaten a new Paralympic record.
For Senegal’s DRAME things did not go as expected as he lost his first match 136 -131 in rainy weather against India’s KUMAR who was ranked 5th in the qualification round. Despite the defeat and elimination, DRAME confirmed the good form he had shown during the qualifications proving that he was well prepared for this event.
As announced before, African archery is not represented in the Paralympic Games by archers only. Our international judge and WAAf’s Secretary General, Dr Ahmed KOURA, EGY, is proudly representing the African archery judges in the current edition of the games. Ahmed KOURA’s experience with events of this caliber is quite rich: he officiated in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the Rio 2016 Olympics, the first Youth Olympics in Singapore in 2010, and the Second Youth Olympics in Nanjing 2014.
Photo credits: World Archery
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