Sadovnycha takes bronze in close competition in archery (08/11/96)

Sadovnycha takes bronze in close competition in archery

by Roman Woronowycz

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. - Maybe it was the borshch she yearned for but couldn't find in the Olympic Village the week before that deprived her of the gold, or maybe she did so well because she had eaten some of the soup. But on July 31, Olena Sadovnycha fell 2 points shy of what could have become gold and ended up with the bronze in the women's individual archery competition.

She lost to eventual champion, Kim Kyung Wook of South Korea, but not without giving her the fight of the competition. After round two of the four-round final, Sadovnycha was down by four arrows, largely because she had begun the match missing badly. She came back strong, however, and hit the bull's eye on three consecutive shots, leaving her behind by two. But Kim responded with the same, and her two 10-pointers, which sandwiched another one by Sadovnycha, were the difference.

Shaking his head, Sadovnycha's coach, Ivan Sayko, said, "See how she finished, that's her. But she had the jitters at the beginning, that's always been her problem."

Still the Kyivan's strong showing in the finals left her with the second highest point total after gold-medalist Kim. Because the results are determined by match-ups and the luck of the draw, she finished in third. In the bronze medal match she handily defeated Elif Altinkaynak of Turkey, 109-102. Silver-medalist He Ying of China was destroyed by Kim, 113-107. Kim finished with six consecutive bull's eyes.

A week ago when asked what she thought about life in the Olympic Village, Sadovnycha and fellow archer Lina Herasymenko of Chernivtsi responded in unison, "There is no borscht and pampushky!" Whether they found it is not known, but at these Games Sadovnycha put on her best performance to date. Prior to this she had been ranked 52nd in the world and had qualified in fifth place in the ranking round of the Olympic competition. In the 1996 European Indoor Championships she took the silver.

Meanwhile her borshch-deprived fellow archer Herasymenko set an Olympic record composite score of 673 points and finished first in the ranking round but then was defeated in the second round of competition. Perhaps on the night before her record-setting day she had found a single bowl of borshch somewhere deep in the bowels of the Olympic Village cafeteria, but not enough to sustain her beyond that second round.

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