CEBU CITY. – As part of their intensive training for three major international tournaments in the coming months, national recurve archers Jonathan Feliciano, Jason Ebbinghans Reaport and siblings Pia and Abby Bidaure left last Sunday for the World Archery Asia Joint Training Program in Wonju, South Korea.
“This will be a combined training camp and competition called the Asia Archery Challenge where we will be training with archers from other countries from all over Asia,” said Abby Bidaure, who combined with elder sister Pia and Phoebe Amistoso in capturing the women’s team gold in the 2022 Vietnam Southeast Asian Games.
She said that all four of them earned their tickets to the weeklong training camp at the Wonju Archery Center after they emerged as the top-ranked archers in the national team qualifiers organized by World Archery Philippines held here the previous week.
“We will be training and competing with some of the archers from all over Asia,” Abby Bidaure said, adding they will be joined by national coaches Clint Sayo and Joy Marino at the training camp.
Based on the official notice sent by World Archery Asia earlier, the training program will have indoor and outdoor sessions that aims to “give Asian archers the opportunity to improve their performance through systematic training and to experience a taste of the real game.”
Sayo said this will mark the second time that the Philippines has been invited to the training camp at the same facility. In November 2022, Abby Bidaure bagged the silver medal in the women’s recurve event.
He added the training was all part of the national recurve team’s tune-up for the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China next month and the Asian championships and Asian Olympic qualifying tournament that will be held in Bangkok, Thailand from Nov. 3 to 11.
He said the team will have another training camp in Taiwan in early September before the national archers see action in the Asian Games.
The younger Bidaure, 21, who fell one match short of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics after losing in the round-of-16 to Greek veteran Evangelia Psarra in the world Olympic qualifiers in Paris, France in 2021, said they are more confident of securing an Olympic ticket in the French capital next year.
“We know what to prepare for and what to expect. We are going with a medal mindset for the Paris Olympics once we get a spot,” she said.
