Australian archer Odette Snazelle in Canberra for nationals

March 27, 2012

, Canberra &mdash; Australian Shadow Olympic team member Odette Snazelle was in Tuggeranong ahead of Thursday and Friday's National Archery Championship target recurve event.

She believes she will do well at Nationals when competing in her event, with a, but that the top women are all very evenly matched and push each other to continually improve. Snazelle would not guarantee victory.

Earlier this year, Snazelle shot a national record for 70/720 with a score of 652.

Participation in the Nationals is basically a compulsory event for Shadow Olympic Team members, as they have possible Olympic qualification implications for Snazelle as there are more girls on the shadow squad than eligible to compete on the full team at the Olympics, so cuts will be made based on performance at the event. On top of that, selection for the World Cup will be made based on the results of this event. The seventeen year old from Sydney, who will celebrate her eighteenth in April, was asked about the lack of media coverage for the sport and said it related to the relative lack of popularity of archery in Australia. Movies like raise the visibility of the sport and temporarily bring in more participants.

She got into sport threes years ago, after watching her former Australian national championship father participate at a local club. Just sitting there and watching got boring so starting to play while at the club was a good way to pass time.

Snazelle finished her HSCs last year and deferred admissions to the University of Sydney where she will major in engineering and medicine with the goal of becoming a for a year in order to further her Olympic dreams. She had originally planned to apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had looked at continuing competing while in the United States but did not want to lose opportunities for national representation by being available for national competitions.

She is learning to drive but because of her busy archery schedule and because, according to Snazelle, Sydney drivers are crazy, she has yet to get her license. When not competing, she works at DVD rental shop.