Archery at the 2018 Asian Games – Women's individual recurve

One month before the opening ceremony, The Chosun Ilbo reported that the South Korean team felt confident of claiming all five gold medals available in the Games' archery programme.[10] The team from Chinese Taipei entered hoping to emulate Yuan Shu-chi's victory in the women's individual recurve in 2002, with Xu Ruiyu of LTSports writing that they were strong enough to challenge for a medal.[11] In an interview with the Bola newspaper in early August, Indonesia's Diananda Choirunisa felt confident of success in front of her home crowd. Following on from her overall victory in the women's individual event at the 2017 Southeast Asian Games, she stated her target was a gold medal despite acknowledging the strength of the South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Indian archers.[12]

For India, 2010 Commonwealth Games champion Deepika Kumari was considered by India Today as the nation's best hope for medals despite arriving for the Games in Jakarta late due to illness.[13] Citing her run of success in the 2018 Archery World Cup leading up to the Asian Games, Manish Pathak of the Hindustan Times called Kumari "perhaps the most consistent athlete" in the women's recurve category and tipped her as a strong medal contender.[14]

South Korea's trio of Kang, Lee, and Chang comfortably topped the 72-arrow ranking round held on 21 August, with defending champion Jung finishing fifth behind Lei Chien-ying of Chinese Taipei. Due to the change in the format of the ranking round, Kang's total of 681 was automatically registered as a new Asian Games record.[7] As per the results of the Korean national selection trials held prior to the Games, Kang and Chang advanced as the two Korean archers to contest the elimination rounds despite Lee outscoring Chang in their 72-arrows to finish one position higher.[15] Behind the Koreans the archers from Chinese Taipei featured strongly, their coach Ni Dazhi praising the consistent shooting of Lei in fifth and of Tan Ya-ting and Peng Chia-mao in sixth and eighth respectively. As the nation's two highest scoring archers, Lei and Tan were selected to advance to the elimination rounds. The fourth member of the team, the less-experienced Lo Hsiao-yuan, ended in a distant 63rd place, more than 100 points behind her teammates.[16]

Kumari finished highest of the Indian quartet in 17th with 649 points, ahead of teammates Promila Daimary (21st), Ankita Bhakat (36th), and Laxmirani Lahji (44th). Despite a promising start, Kumari dropped out of contention for a top 10 seed with a poor arrow in the second half of the round, scoring just 19 from a possible 30 in one of her last three-arrow sections. Reflecting afterwards she commented that "[i]t was not that I lost focus. It was just a loose shot. It happens."[17]

Deepika Kumari (left, pictured in 2011) and Chang Hye-jin (right, pictured in 2014) both struggled in the elimination rounds despite high expectations for success, losing in the last sixteen and last eight respectively.

The elimination rounds began two days after the ranking round on 23 August. India's challenge ended in the 1/8 elimination round after Kumari lost to Lei by seven set points to three. Following early exits at both the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2014 Asian Games, Kumari's failure to perform once more in an international competition was criticised by the Press Trust of India and the Mumbai Mirror, the latter commenting her reaction to her defeat suggested "failure had become part and parcel of her journey".[18][19] India's recurve archery coach Sawaiyan Manjhi expressed confusion at Kumari's defeat, stating the loss was a "shock result", but nevertheless expressed optimism for Kumari's teammate Daimary, who lost in the earlier 1/16 elimination round on her debut in a major international competition.[18] The 1/8 elimination round also saw Indonesia's Choirunisa receive a walkover after her opponent, 2012 Paralympic champion Zahra Nemati of Iran, was disqualified for arriving at the competition site for the match 30 seconds late. Nemati told reporters that she had been sent for lunch, but shortly after leaving the site was told that the competition had resumed and was not able to return in time.[20]

The top seven seeds each successfully reached the quarter-finals, which began just before midday on 23 August. The match between Choirunisa and Chang featured the biggest upset, with Chang delivering an uneven performance typified by a pair of sevens in her third set and the failure to win the fifth set to tie the game, allowing the Indonesian to take an unexpected victory by seven set points to three and advance to the semi-final.[21] The Korea JoongAng Daily suggested Chang's defeat was due to the pressure placed upon her shoulders from national expectations to win gold medals in both the women's team recurve and the mixed recurve events, in addition to the women's individual recurve.[5] South Korea's hopes of a gold medal were therefore pinned on top seed Kang, who had earlier dispatched Cao Hui of China in four sets to set up a semi-final tie with Cao's compatriot Zhang Xinyan.

The two semi-finals matches held later on the afternoon of 23 August saw two further upsets. Kang's defeat in the semi-finals to Zhang, who held a world ranking of 113, led to the first women's individual recurve final at the Asian Games without a South Korea archer present in four decades of competition.[21] The failure to contest for a fourth successive gold medal in one of the team's strongest disciplines, as well as shortcomings by South Korean athletes in a number of different sports across the Games, led The Chosun Ilbo to describe the national sporting situation as "desperate" in the run-up to the 2020 Summer Olympics.[22] The second semi-final saw Choirunisa triumph against Lei despite a head-to-head record that strongly favoured the Chinese Taipei archer. Choirunisa's win made her the first individual female archer from Indonesia to reach an Asian Games gold medal contest. The consistency shown by the Indonesian since the beginning of the elimination rounds was noted by Edi Purwanto of Pikiran Rakyat as key to her success, particularly in the final four sets of the semi-final when Lei's arrows dropped into the 7 and 8-rings.[23]

After a break of five days, in which the team recurve and mixed recurve events were completed, the competition resumed on the morning of 28 August for the two medal matches. Following the success of Kang, Chang, and Lee in the women's team recurve over Chinese Taipei the previous morning, Kang added a second medal to her 2018 Asian Games tally by defeating Lei in five sets to win the bronze medal.[24]

The gold medal match was held right after the conclusion of the bronze medal match. In front of a crowd that included the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo,[25] Zhang claimed the gold medal with a perfect score of 30 in both her first and final set. Zhang's success came despite the Games being only her second senior international competition, her only previous experience being the fourth stage of the 2018 Archery World Cup in Berlin one month earlier.[3][26] Choirunisa earned the Indonesia's second recurve archery silver medal of the Games after Riau Ega Agatha's loss to South Korean Lee Woo-seok in the men's individual event earlier in the day.[25] Following a reapportionment of qualification spots at the 2019 World Archery Championships, Choirunisa's silver medal finish earned Indonesia a place at the 2020 Summer Olympics.[27]

	1/32 eliminations					1/16 eliminations					1/8 eliminations					Quarterfinals
						7	Diananda Choirunisa (INA)	6
	39	Sonam Dema (BHU)	6			39	Sonam Dema (BHU)	4
	26	Waraporn Phutdee (THA)	4								7	Diananda Choirunisa (INA)	WO
	23	Zahra Nemati (IRI)	6								23	Zahra Nemati (IRI)
	42	Nabeela Kausar (PAK)	0			23	Zahra Nemati (IRI)	6*
						10	Farida Tukebayeva (KAZ)	5
																7	Diananda Choirunisa (INA)	7
																2	Chang Hye-jin (KOR)	3
						15	Nguyễn Thị Phương (VIE)	6
						18	Luiza Saidiyeva (KAZ)	2
											15	Nguyễn Thị Phương (VIE)	4
	31	Nanthinee Jaehomkrue (THA)	5								2	Chang Hye-jin (KOR)	6
	34	Jen Kaboksy (LAO)	6*			34	Jen Kaboksy (LAO)	0
						2	Chang Hye-jin (KOR)	6

Note: An asterisk (*) denotes a win from a one-arrow shoot-off
Source:[30]

	Semifinals										Gold medal match
	1	Kang Chae-young (KOR)	4	29	27	27	28	25
	5	Zhang Xinyan (CHN)	6	29	27	28	26	29
											5	Zhang Xinyan (CHN)	7	30	28	27	29	30
											7	Diananda Choirunisa (INA)	3	28	28	28	24	27
	3	Lei Chien-ying (TPE)	3	29	29	25	27	25
	7	Diananda Choirunisa (INA)	7	27	29	27	29	28			Bronze medal match
											1	Kang Chae-young (KOR)	6	29	29	27	30	30
											3	Lei Chien-ying (TPE)	4	27	30	29	28	28

Source:[30]