By NEIL DAVIDSON -- Canadian Press
  TORONTO -- This really will be a long weekend for Canadian archers Rob Rusnov and David Dalziel.

  The two top archers in Canada are scheduled to go head-to-head in a shootout to determine which one goes to Sydney. Both have met the qualifying standard set by the Canadian Olympic Association but Canada can only send one.

  "I think it's just going to be huge," Canadian Olympic archery coach Joan McDonald said Wednesday of the pressure surrounding the shootout. "I can't imagine doing it. If there were three people, it wouldn't be quite as intense.

  "These two are also very good friends, so it's not an easy thing to do."

  The two have also been teammates, winning a silver in the men's archery event at the 1999 Pan American Games in Winnipeg.

  McDonald is feeling some stress herself. She coaches both athletes, although she will watch from the background on the weekend as other coaches help the two Olympic hopefuls.

  The two will start Friday by shooting 72 arrows each from 70 metres before switching to a matchplay format on the weekend with six 18-arrow matches Saturday and nine 12-arrow matches Sunday.

  Each win will be worth points and the overall victor goes to Sydney.

  The competition is akin to that at the Olympics, where archers shoot a ranking round of 72 arrows before being seeded by score with No. 1 taking on No. 64, No. 2 against No. 63 and so on.

  In 1996, prior to the Atlanta Games, there was a four-man shootout won by Kevin Sally of Pickering, Ont. Rusnov was later given a wild-card by the International Olympic Committee to compete in Atlanta and the Canadian team swelled to three when Montreal's Jeannot Robitaille was invited to join the field the day before the opening ceremonies.

  All three were eliminated in the first round of match play at Atlanta, with Sally setting a pair of Canadian records on the way.

  There is a possibility the loser this weekend will still go to Sydney, since berths could come open from countries who have Olympic spots but fail to find qualified athletes to fill them.

  "There is a chance that we could get a second spot from the waiting light," McDonald said. "I think we need a fairy godmother with good powers for that to happen.

  "We won't here for that to happen, I expect, until the second week of July."

  Rusnov, 26, of Richmond Hill, Ont., and Dalziel, 20, a native of Prince Albert Sask., who trains in Toronto, have spent countless hours preparing for Sydney.

  They shoot five days a week, twice a day.

  "Three, four hours in the morning, then they go back for another two to three hours in the late afternoon and early evening," McDonald said. "And probably an hour and a half five days a week in the gym or running or do exercise."

  Just firing a bow is the equivalent of pulling back some 22 kilograms each shot.

  Rusnov, a second-year engineering student at Ryerson, has been No. 1 or No. 2 in Canada since 1992. He has more experience than Dalziel but finished behind him at the 1999 Pan Am Games where Dalziel finished fourth.

  Rusnov won two gold and three bronze medals at the '95 Pan American Games. Dalziel only jumped to the senior level from the junior ranks in 1999.

  Canada's top finish in Olympic archery was a fifth by Lucille Lemay Jackson at the 1976 Games.