Evan Rich Wins the Shoot-Off Then Meets the Third Seed

Malaysia's recurve men are out of the 20th Asian Games. Evan Rich Chong and Quik Chern Xin both won their opening matches on Tuesday and both lost the next one, leaving the national squad without a representative in the event.

There was one small correction to the week's pattern along the way. After losing two shoot-offs in the team events on Sunday and another in the compound women's on Monday, Evan Rich Chong won one — beating Vietnam's Nguyen Duy on a single arrow.

---

Evan Rich Chong: 6–5 on the Last Arrow

Seeded nineteenth, Evan Rich Chong met fourteenth seed Nguyen Duy in the round of 32 and could not shake him. The scorecards were near-identical: Evan Rich shot 28, 26, 28, 27, 28; Nguyen Duy shot 29, 25, 28, 27, 28. Five sets, five points each.

The shoot-off went to Malaysia, 10 to 9.

The round of sixteen was a harder proposition. Tang Chih-Chun of Chinese Taipei, the third seed and a bronze medallist at the last Games, opened with 27 and 27 — scores Evan Rich could have lived with — then closed with two ends of 29. Malaysia's 28 in the first set was the only one they took.

Quik Chern Xin: A Win, Then Kim Je Deok

Quik Chern Xin, the nineteen-year-old at his first Asian Games, had the tougher route by seeding and the easier first match. Ranked thirty-first, he opened against Kyrgyzstan's Emirbek Mashev in the round of 48 and won 6–2, shooting 29, 28, 27 and 28 against a Kyrgyz card that opened 23 and 24.

What waited in the round of 32 was Kim Je Deok — the Korean second seed, two-time Olympic champion, and the man who had qualified 693 here. It lasted three ends. Kim shot 28, 28, 30 to Quik Chern Xin's 26, 27, 27 and won 6–0.

The Footnote

Kim Je Deok did not go much further. In the round of sixteen he met India's Neeraj Chauhan, seeded eighteenth, and lost 4–6. The Korean who had ended Quik Chern Xin's Games was out of his own within the hour.

It is the kind of detail that makes recurve matchplay what it is. Seeding buys a draw, not a result, and across Tuesday the eighteenth seed beat the second, Bhutan's Kinley Tshering beat Indonesia's fifth seed and then won a shoot-off against China, and two Bhutanese archers reached the quarterfinals.

Where Malaysia Stands

With the recurve men gone, Malaysia's campaign narrows to two fronts. Fatin Nurfatehah Mat Salleh is in the compound women's quarterfinal on Thursday morning, facing Korea's Park Jungyoon. The recurve women — Ariana Nur Diana Mohamad Zairi and Joey Tan Xing Lei — shoot their eliminations later today.

Evan Rich Chong and Quik Chern Xin leave Aichi-Nagoya with a bronze from the Asia Cup in Bangkok earlier this year and a round-of-16 finish here. For Quik Chern Xin, nineteen and at his first Games, a win over Kyrgyzstan and three ends against an Olympic champion is not a bad first entry in the ledger.