Đỗ Thị Ánh Nguyệt is one of Việt Nam's athletes taking part in the World Archery Championships in Germany from August 1-7. VNS Photo Thanh Vũ

HÀ NỘI — Vietnamese athletes will compete in the World Archery Championships in Germany from August 1-7.

A team of six competitors are against more than 530 rivals from 81 countries and territories over the world, competing in 10 men's and women's individual and team recurve and compound categories.

It is the first major Paris 2024 Olympic Qualifier event in archery. They will compete at Maifeld and along Olympischer Platz in the Berlin Olympic Park, with a total of 24 Olympic quota spots up for grabs.

Among the Vietnamese, Asian champion Nguyễn Thị Thanh Nhi and former SEA Games winner Đỗ Thị Ánh Nguyệt are the most promising athletes for high results in Germany.

The title candidate will be South Korean An San who was the first archer to claim three gold recurve medals at a single Olympic Games at Tokyo 2020. She and teammate Choi Mi-sun will have to contend with the rise of British archers Penny Healey and Bryony Pitman who are respectively first and second in the world rankings. 

On the men's side, the top-ranked South Korean is Kim Woo-jin, the double Olympic champion in the team event. Others are Brazil's Marcus d'Almeida, world number one, and Germany's Florian Unruh, number two.

In the compound event, which is a non-Olympic discipline, No 1 Mike Schloesser of the Netherlands is the favourite in the men's class. Slovakia's Jozef Bosansky along with Nicolas Girard of France, James Lutz of the US and Austria's Nico Wiener form the next rank of challengers to Schloesser.

On the women's side, defending champion Sara López of Colombia remains a top challenger followed by Ella Gibson of Great Britain. 

The world tournament is an important event for Việt Nam to test their skills before they take part in the Asian Games (ASIAD) in September in China.

"All archers have prepared for this tournament. We will take this opportunity to check our athletes' qualities and know more about our (Asian) opponents," said Phan Trọng Quân of the Sports Authority of Việt Nam.

"Our coaching board will make up a plan for each athlete so that they will have the best results."

He added that this period was crucial for the ASIAD preparation so the world tournament would be the key competition to sharpen their technique. 

In Asia, teams of South Korea, China and Chinese Taipei are the strongest ones as many of their archers are at the world level. They are said title favourites at the Hangzhou ASIAD. VNS