Matt Stutzman steals the show in his first Paralympic Games appearance

Great Britain and Russia also produce strong performances in archery 30 Aug 2012
Imagen
Archery

An archer competes at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

ⒸGetty

“Qualifying first is great, but I still feel I have room for improvement."

American Matt Stutzman produced an outstanding performance as three Paralympic records fell on the first day of archery despite an onslaught of wind and rain.

Great Britain and Russia also provided strong performances in closely fought men’s and women’s matches, while China dominated the recurve stand class for women, claiming the top two places.

In the final men's ranking event of the day, Stutzman lived up to the hype surrounding his first Paralympic Games appearance, finishing 12 points clear of second place on 685 points.

“I feel good,” Stutzman said.

“Qualifying first is great, but I still feel I have room for improvement.

“Most importantly this puts me in a great place moving forward into the main event tomorrow (Friday).”

Defending Paralympic champion Danielle Brown, of Great Britain, continued her domination of the women's compound open event.

Brown’s score of 676 is her lowest of the season, but still put her ahead of Russia's Stepanida Artakhinova who scored 672 for second place.

Iran showed they will be formidable opponents in the recurve events with Zahra Nemati finishing first in her W1/W2 class, while teammates Ebrahim Ranjbarkiva and Zahra Javanmard finished second and fifth in their classes.

Lung Hui Tseng gained the top place and set a Paralympic record in the men's recurve W1/W2 event with 650 points, bettering the previous record by 14 points.

Another Paralympic record fell with British athlete Kenny Allen ranking first and scoring 651, 13 points more than the previous high set in Athens 2004 by Hak-Young Lee.

And in the women's recurve W1/W2 a Paralympic record of 613 was set by Zahra Nemati, beating the former top score held by Yanhong Xiao by two points.

David Drahoninsky demonstrated why he is world number one and favourite in the men's compound W1 event with his score of 662 - just three points short of his Paralympic record and three points ahead of world record holder Jeff Fabry.

In the women's recurve, one point was enough to give Fangxia Gao the top spot over Milena Olszewska as they scored 581 and 580.

In the men's team recurve, the top ranking position went to the British team with a score of 1,879, while in the women’s, the Chinese women had a very impressive ranking round and beat the second-placed Iranian team by 68 points, 1,714 to 1,646.