Olympics: Bad form may hound Javier foe

LONDON—He’s got a mountain to climb to advance in the knockout stages, but Mark Javier is unruffled.

The country’s main hope in archery at these London Olympics is hoping that his foe in the first round of the men’s 70-meter individual competition—former World No. 1 Ellison Brady of the United States—continues his bad form here.

“He (Brady) is very good but he’s struggling,” Javier said in Filipino of his 24-year-old opponent. “I want to think that he’s not used to posting that low score (676) in competition.”

Javier, who is trying to redeem himself from a disastrous first-round finish in the Beijing Olympics four years ago, where he yielded the lead to his Taiwanese opponent only in the last five arrows, said the format in the knockout stages offers him a chance to upset Brady.

The top 64 archers are paired for the match play, called the Olympic Round, in which the No. 1 qualifier battles No. 64, No. 2 duels No. 63, and so on.

The archers play matches out of 5 sets of 3 arrows. The winner of each set—the archer who gets the highest cumulative score with his three arrows—gets 2 set points. If the set is tied, each protagonist gets 1 set point. The archer who gets the number of set points, not the score of the arrows, wins the match.

“It’s a new Olympic format and gives everyone an even chance of scoring an upset,” said Javier, who made it to the Games during the sport’s last qualifying tournament in Utah two months ago.

Javier and Rachelle Anne Cabral, who was still competing in the women’s individual event at presstime Friday, came into the Olympics sharpened by a new training regimen ordered by their Korean coach, Hung Jun-hun.

“My score (649) today is basically my average,” said Javier. “The real competition starts in the match play because of the new scoring system.”