Veronika Marchenko (archer)


Veronika Serhiyivna Marchenko is a Ukrainian competitive archer. She has collected a career total of six medals in a major international competition, spanning the World Indoor Championships, the European Games, and the European Championships.

Career

Marchenko rose to prominence on the global archery scene at the 2014 World Indoor Championships in Nimes, France. There, she and her compatriots Lidiia Sichenikova and Anastasia Pavlova powered past the German women on a tactical 14-point advantage to capture the team recurve title. Marchenko also added the bronze to the trio's career treasury by ousting the neighboring Russia in a high-quality 5–4 shoot-off at the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Marchenko was selected to compete for the Ukrainian squad at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, shooting in both individual and team recurve tournaments. Two months before her maiden Games, she commanded the Ukrainian trio in thrashing the Estonian side for one of three women's team spaces at the World Archery Cup meet in Antalya, Turkey. Marchenko opened the tournament by discharging a total of 630 points, 15 perfect tens, and 6 bull's eyes to seal the thirtieth seed heading to the knockout draw from the classification round, along with the trio's cumulative score of 1,890. Sitting at eighth in the women's team recurve, Marchenko, along with Pavlova and Sichenikova, slipped out of their initial round match to a convincing 2–6 defeat from the ninth-seeded Japanese women. In the women's individual recurve, Marchenko successfully overcame Estonia's Laura Nurmsalu for a comfortable 6–0 victory in the opening round, before she faced a 2–6 conquest in her subsequent match from the defending champion Ki Bo-bae of South Korea.