Hugo Franco

Havana, July 25 (RHC) - Cuba's Hugo Franco finished 21st in the qualifying round of recurve archery at 70m, at the start of the archery competition of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Palais des Invalides.

Franco, a debutant in Olympic events and the first Cuban to compete in Paris, scored 669 units, eight points short of his personal best, and placed a meritorious 21st among 64 archers.

With this result, in the round of the direct elimination matches that will start on the 30th, he will face in the first match the Mexican Bruno Martinez Wing, who placed 44th with a total of 653 units.

The best Cuban performance in archery in the Olympic Games corresponded to the already retired Juan Carlos Stevens, fifth in the Beijing 2008 competition, just one point away from the semifinals.

In the women's category, South Korea's Sihyeon Lim set the first world record at the Paris-2024 Olympic Games on Thursday, scoring 694 points in the qualifying round of the women's individual archery event.

With the historic Palais des Invalides as witness, the 21-year-old athlete dominated the preliminary stage of the discipline, followed by her compatriot Suhyeon Nam, (688) and China's Xiaolei Yang with 673.

The previous world record was held by another South Korean, Chaeyoung Kang, with 692 since 2019.