Archery - Naomi Folkard selected for Beijing olympics

Jun 24 2008

WARWICKSHIRE archer Naomi Folkard Leamington Spa, will be taking part in her second Olympic Games when she heads off to Beijing in August. 

At the end of the third and final leg of the gruelling selection process, held last week at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre, 24-year-old Folkard maintained her position at the top of the selection table to guarantee her place in the three lady archery team bound for Beijing.

Each of the three legs involved two FITA 70 rounds with round robin head-to-head matches.  The number of archers competing was reduced after each leg.

Scoring was complicated, with bonus points for match wins and scores exceeding target scores, and minus points for failure to meet target scores. The points gained in each leg were carried forward.

Folkard’s final points tally at the end of 6 days of competition was 6249.10. Athens Olympic bronze medallist, Alison Williamson (Long Mynd) finished on 6189.02 to secure a place in her fifth Olympics. The third place goes to Charlotte Burgess (Bruntwood) 5988.34. The reserve will be Emma Downie (Edinburgh University) 5749.00.

Folkard, Williamson and Burgess are the ladies who earned three Olympic places for GB at the World Championships last year by taking the bronze team medal.

The GB ladies team, after a number of subsequent international successes is now ranked World No. 2. Folkard who finished 11th in Athens and was the silver medallist at the European Championships earlier this year, is now ranked World no. 9.

Naomi said: “We all get on so well together, we’re really good friends, we train together and we have a really good rapport.  On a personal note, I am delighted to be going to the Olympics for the second time”.

Naomi, a Birmingham University music graduate, from Leamington Spa, is a full-time archer with Leamington and has shot since she was seven-years-old.