Top seeds Juwaidi Mazuki of Malaysia and Wang Lu-Yun of Chinese Taipei took the compound men’s and women’s gold medals at the Second Leg of the 2019 Asia Cup in Taipei as the Malaysian team topped the podium four times. Mazuki defeated teammate Mohanaraja Khambeswaran, 140-139, in a windy men’s final.
“I’m really happy. I‘ve been shooting the Asia Cup since 2014 and always finish silver or bronze for both team and individual,” he said. “It’s a really good experience and helps us to keep our morale up since our South East Asian Games are just around the corner.”
The multisport regional event takes place every two years and is next scheduled for this November in the Philippines. Malaysia will be strong favourites in the compound competitions after taking men’s team, women‘s team and mixed team gold to go along with Juwaidi‘s first career individual victory here in Taipei.
“I really hope I can step up my game and bring back more medals from international tournaments, especially high-level world tournaments,” he added.
Malaysia has had a successful season on the world stage but had seen better performances from its recurve team so far.
Khairul Anuar Mohamad, who also shoots for gold at the second leg of the Asia Cup, finished runner-up at the 2019 Hyundai World Archery Championships in ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands – one week after Suresh Selvathamby won gold at the world para championships.
Chinese Taipei’s lone top seed at its home stage of the continental tour, Wang Lu-Yun, beat Singapore’s Loh Tze Chieh in the compound women’s final.
The pair had tied on 137 points at the end of the regulation 15-arrow 50-metre match. Wang shot a nine with her tiebreak arrow to beat Loh’s eight and take gold.
Malaysia is already guaranteed to lead the medal table at the second leg of the 2019 Asia Cup – and the nation’s archers will contest a further four gold medals on recurve finals day in Chinese Taipei.
Teams from Australia, Hong Kong China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Chinese Taipei are competing at the tournament.
