Area Olympian wins silver medal

Oak Har­bor native com­petes on U.S. men’s archery team

By BETSY BLANEY
Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON — From left, United States’ Brady Elli­son, Jake Kamin­ski and Jacob Wukie pose with their sil­ver medals after the team com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the 2012 Sum­mer Olympics on Sat­ur­day. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

LONDON (AP) — On the final arrow, the U.S. lost Olympic gold in men’s team archery.

No mat­ter — the Amer­i­cans were still thrilled to win the first U.S. medal at the Lon­don Games.

Italy topped the U.S. trio of Brady Elli­son, Jake Kamin­ski and Jacob Wukie—from Oak Har­bor, Ohio—by one point on Sat­ur­day for the team gold, while South Korea took the bronze.

Michele Frangilli, Marco Gali­azzo and Mauro Nespoli hugged and raised their hands in cel­e­bra­tion after the final arrow from Frangilli beat the Amer­i­cans 219–218 at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The gold was Italy’s first ever in the event.

Frangilli, who was part of a team bronze in 1996 and won sil­ver in Syd­ney four years later, called the final a “very hard fought” match.

The Amer­i­cans came to Lon­don focused on the team com­pe­ti­tion, sim­ply because they thought shar­ing in the expe­ri­ence of win­ning a medal would be more pow­er­ful to the group than tak­ing one individually.

“We’ve worked so hard prior to this to build a strong team and to train as a team,” Wukie said. “And so, obvi­ously, it paid off.”

———

AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds con­tributed to this report

Posted by Brad Frank on Jul 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.