The first World Cup of 2026 saw a genuinely historic moment: only the second ever clean sweep of the women’s individual podium by a single nation, as the youthful Chinese trio of Zhu Jingyi, Yu Qi, and Huang Yuwei – age 19, 18 and 21 respectively – did just that on top of winning the team and mixed team titles and handing Zhu a rare triple World Cup gold, pushing her to 4th in the world ranking.
The only other clean sweep of the women’s World Cup podium was achieved by the Korean team of Kang Chaeyoung, Choi Misun, and Ki Bo Bae back at the Shanghai World Cup in 2015. (It was Misun and Chaeyoung’s debut World Cup performance.)
Of course, the Chinese win in Puebla was achieved in the absence of a recurve squad from Korea, who are still selecting their frontline teams for the year. It shouldn’t take away from an achievement that may add to the jitters in Jincheon in an Asian Games year, and it was also achieved without Li Jiaman, the most successful individual Chinese recurve woman in recent years.
It’s been said before, but it’s difficult to overstate how important the Asian Games is to the big nations that contest it, in archery and many other sports. This year it will be held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan at the end of September and the beginning of October, with the archery competition held in the coastal city of Okazaki, Japan.
By far the biggest multi-sport event outside the Olympics, the last event, in Hangzhou, China in 2022 actually welcomed more athletes in total than the Games in Paris. Winning an Asian Games medal is almost as important as an Olympic medal – especially to the Korean archery team.
Korea’s women have dominated the team event much as they have at the Olympics, although China’s women won back in 1994 and have finished runner-up to Korea no less than six times.
