Lausanne, Jan 13, 2014: Another highly-consistent World Cup season and double gold at the Cali World Games was enough to win USA compound archer Erika JONES the World Archery Female Athlete of the Year 2013 award, after she took 39% of the public vote.
World Archery’s Athlete of the Year award expanded in 2013 to include both a male and female award (previously there has been just one winner), with seven archers shortlisted as finalists in each category.
Over 12,000 archery fans took part in an online vote in December 2013, while members of World Archery’s Athlete and Coaches Committees ranked their favourite finalists in a separate poll. Shortlisted athletes’ final rankings were determined by a combined average of the public and committee votes.
Without further delay… here are the full results of World Archery’s Female Athlete of the Year 2013!
1) Erika JONES (USA) – 27% (public: 39%, committee: 15%)
Compound women’s world number one Erika JONES had four World Cup silvers in 2013, the last coming at her third Final in four year. But the 25-year-old’s best performance of last season: individual and mixed team gold at the World Games in Cali… or winning a massive 39% of the public vote on the way to being named World Archery’s Female Athlete of the Year for 2013!
2) Sara LOPEZ (COL) – 20% (public: 20%, committee: 20%)
Individual gold on home soil at last July’s Medellin World Cup stage announced Sara LOPEZ’s ar-rival as a world class archer. Since then, she picked up bronze at the World Games, a Junior World Champion title, moved up to third in the world rankings… and has become something of a fan favourite.
3) Burcu DAG (TUR) – 19% (public: 33%, committee: 6%)
Burcu DAG secured double-gold at last year’s World Para-Archery Championships in Bangkok. She beat Beijing and London Paralympic Champion Dani BROWN (GBR) to the compound wom-en’s open title, then again to the compound mixed team title with partner Erdoğan AYGAN.
4) YUN Ok Hee (KOR) – 11% (public: 2%, committee: 21%)
At the end of 2010, YUN Ok Hee won the World Cup Final and the Asian Games, before dis-appearing from international archery… until 2013. Last year, she won World Cup stages one and four, took silver at two, and won the Final, again. Then bronze at the World Champion-ships confirmed what we already knew: YUN Ok Hee is back! And she deserves her spot on this list…
5) Maja JAGER (DEN) – 11% (public: 2%, committee: 20%)
…as does the person who knocked YUN out of the World Championships: Maja JAGER, who also dispatched Olympic champion KI Bo Bae on her way to gold in Belek. JAGER was named Denmark’s Athlete of the Year for her achievement – and is a hot name to watch heading into the 2014 season.
6) Kristina BERGER (GER) – 6% (public: 3%, committee: 10%)
Ex-international pistol shooter Kristina BERGER won the compound women’s division at the Belek World Championships in only her second season with the German archery team. She has climbed the individual podium at seven of the 11 international tournaments she has competed at. Not a bad record!
7) Zahra NEMATI (IRI) – 5% (public: 1%, committee: 9%)
Double Paralympic Champion Zahra NEMATI took revenge for her 2011 World Para-Archery Championships final loss to China’s XIAO Yanhong in 2013. She took recurve women’s W2 gold in a tense 5-set match in Bangkok, Thailand – and shows no sign of letting off before the 2014 Asian Para Games in Incheon. —- WA
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