Wietse van Alten

Wietse Cornelis van Alten (born September 24, 1978 in Zaandam ) is a Dutch archer . He is a bronze medalist at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney .

Van Alten started archery at the age of seven. The first major international competition in which van Alten took part was the World Archery Championships in 1999. There he finished eighth and with this placement secured the Netherlands a place at the 2000 Olympic Games.

In Sydney van Alten surprisingly made it to the semi-finals. There he was defeated by the later Olympic champion Simon Fairweather from Australia . In the battle for third place, van Alten then scored 114 points from 12 arrows in a duel with the Swede Magnus Petersson, the highest score of the entire tournament and won the first medal for the Netherlands in archery since 1920 . In the team competition he was ninth with the Dutch team.

An injury and the subsequent surgery on his elbow forced him to take a break in 2001. In 2003 van Alten celebrated a successful comeback at the World Archery Championships in New York with two sixth places in the individual and team competition.

At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens , van Alten took part in an individual competition to defend his bronze medal. After qualifying he was 14th with 661 points from 72 arrows. In the round of 64 he won his duel with Ricardo Merlos from El Salvador with 152: 151. In the second round he was defeated by the Italian Ilario Di Buò with 160: 164 and was eliminated. In the final statement, van Alten took 27th place.

Things went better together with his teammates Pieter Custers and Ron van der Hoff . They reached 5th place in the team competition.

Web links

• Official website of Wietse van Alten ( Memento of January 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (in Dutch and English)