Both Recurve Women Out Malaysia Is Down to Fatin

Malaysia's two recurve women were eliminated on Tuesday afternoon, ending the country's recurve campaign at the 20th Asian Games without a quarterfinalist in any of the five events it entered.

Joey Tan Xing Lei was the better of the two. Seeded twenty-eighth, she opened against Kyrgyzstan's Eliza Tynalieva and won 6–0 without conceding a set, shooting 29, 27 and 27 against a Kyrgyz card of 21, 21 and 19. It was the most one-sided win any Malaysian archer recorded at these Games.

The round of 32 brought Li Tsai-Chi of Chinese Taipei, seeded fifth, and a different kind of match. Joey Tan took the third set 29–28 and drew the second, but Li Tsai-Chi closed with 29 and 30 to win 7–3. Across five ends the Malaysian shot 138 to the Taiwanese archer's 142.

Ariana Nur Diana: Three Ends

Ariana Nur Diana Mohamad Zairi, Malaysia's highest-qualified recurve woman at twentieth, had a bye into the round of 32 and met Indonesia's Diananda Choirunisa, seeded thirteenth. She lost every set — 28 to 29, 27 to 29, 27 to 28 — and the match went 6–0 in three ends.

Her 82 across those three sets was not a poor score. Choirunisa's 86 was simply better in each of them, and in set play that is the whole difference.

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The Recurve Campaign in Full

Malaysia entered five recurve events at Aichi-Nagoya — men's team, women's team, mixed team, men's individual and women's individual. It won four matches and lost seven, and did not reach a quarterfinal in any of them.

The three team events all ended in the round of sixteen on Sunday: the men beaten 1–5 by Chinese Taipei, the women 2–6 by Indonesia, and the mixed pair 4–5 by Chinese Taipei on a shoot-off.

The individuals fared slightly better. Three of the four archers won their opening match. Evan Rich Chong went furthest, beating Vietnam's Nguyen Duy on a shoot-off before losing to third seed Tang Chih-Chun in the round of sixteen. Quik Chern Xin and Joey Tan both won once and went out in the round of 32, Quik to Olympic champion Kim Je Deok and Joey to the fifth seed. Ariana Nur Diana was the only one not to win a match.

There is a qualifier worth attaching. Of the seven defeats, four came against archers seeded in the top five of their event and one against a reigning Olympic champion. The recurve squad was seeded between nineteenth and thirty-first in the individual events and twelfth and thirteenth in the team events; it lost, broadly, to the people it was expected to lose to. What it did not do at any point was beat one of them.

Down to One

With the recurve programme closed, Malaysia has a single archer left at the 20th Asian Games. Fatin Nurfatehah Mat Salleh shoots the compound women's quarterfinal on Thursday morning at 09:34 against Park Jungyoon of Korea, the third seed.

She is two wins from a gold medal match and one from a bronze. She got there by beating the sixth seed by a single point on Monday, having beaten the twenty-second seed by a single point an hour earlier. Whatever happens on Thursday, she has carried the contingent since the team events ended.