Take a look at this FaceBook video by Elisa Barnard from the Australian Youth Olympic Festival. The talks about what it takes to be a good archer and some about the archery equipment and technology used by todays archer.
Archery will be one of the sports at the Youth Olympics in Singapore that will participate in mixed gender teams. Yes, boys and girls will be competing on the same teams, from the same country. Archery is a natural sport for this kind of competition.
Certain other sports such as archery, athletics, cycling (with one event a combined one of road race and BMX), fencing, judo, modern pentathlon, swimming, tennis, table tennis and triathlon will also be modelled on that format.
Others will be tried out under another model, such as basketball which will feature teams of just three on half the usual size court.
The inaugural hosts were warned in early August at the Beijing Olympics by The IOC Co-ordination commission chairman Sergey Bubka that they had ‘no time to lose’ in starting operations for the Games.
“They’ve got no time to lose from concept to operations,” the Ukrainian pole vaulting legend said as he revealed the need to change the original plan for the athletes’ village.
She fractured her toe while dancing in the lounge room of her Sydney home in 2004.
To keep her entertained during the school holidays her mother packed her off to an Archery camp at Sydney Olympic Park.
Wearing an air boot for protection she shuffled around at the camp learning the technical skills of the sport.” At the end of the camp, the coach came up to me and said I should seriously consider encouraging my daughter to take up the sport,” her mother Karina said.
In a little over a year Barnard was the state champion. Later in 2005 she competed in her first national titles and has since won the overall junior recurve championship twice.
This year, Barnard competed at the World Youth Championships in Turkey finishing 10th in the individual and fifth in the teams event.
“It was a great experience, so much fun,” she said. “The competition was the hardest it has ever been. I was really happy with the ranking round, where I finished 10th with a personal best.
What’s it like to be an Olympic archer? How much time and training is needed? Jake Kaminski blogged about it not too long ago.
Well I basically train 6 days a week and work on my rest day. Every day we run from 7 till 730, and go into mental training from 730 till 8. Shooting is from 9 till noon and 130 till 530 week days except on Thursday afternoon. Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays at lunch we go to weight training for roughly an hour and 10 minutes. On the weekends, I shoot in the afternoon, I also work the archery club Thursday afternoon, Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. Basically my entire week is consumed by archery.
The article is short on details in specifics with the archery teams, but it looks like the world-wide financial situation is affecting certain sports in the UK. The government is looking to match monies gathered from the private sector. For certain sports, this hasn’t materialized, for others the situation is better.
The axe hangs over ten of Great Britain’s Olympic teams before a key funding decision next week that will define the country’s preparations for London 2012.
So, who could be the winners and losers in the scramble for cash?
Winners Sports that met or exceeded their targets in Beijing in August or are able to identify potential medal-winners in 2012 — archery, athletics, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrianism, gymnastics (artistic), judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, swimming/diving, taekwondo, triathlon.
Losers Sports that missed their Beijing targets or have little chance of a medal in 2012 — basketball, fencing, handball, hockey, shooting, table tennis, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling.
EXMOUTH’S Olympic archery hopefuls will be forced to leave the town to train in the lead-up to London 2012 if a new all-weather archery range in Withycombe is not approved.
The club want to build a 31-metre-long, eight-target indoor archery range next to their outdoor facilities at the southern corner of Withycombe Raleigh Common.
The timber-clad design, covering 403 square metres - with an additional 52 square metres of landscaping - would be given the appearance of a ‘traditional barn’ and would be ’sympathetic’ to the surrounding area.
The building would stand a little under five metres tall, be 12 metres wide and set into the hillside ‘to minimise the visual impact’.
I just found this blog, titled “My Archery Blog”. I like that. Straight and to the point. It looks like a young blog and I hope she sticks with it. Vanessa Lee is an archer from our neighbors up north, Canada. She talks about the “war” it is just to make it onto the Korean archery team. Once that’s accomplished, the pressure of the Olympics isn’t so much.
When I spoke to my coach in Korea over the phone last week, she talked about the national team trials for the 2009 World Championships and Asian Championships. Unlike the one-time deal type of trials (or two-time deal) here in Canada, there are several stages involved in Korean team trials. My coach said it’s so intense, everyone is at each other’s throats and it’s like war. At the first stage, there were over 200 archers who shot the ranking round and went into eliminations. After eliminations, only the top 32 went on to the second stage. My friend, Hye-Jin, (who I talked about in my last post) made it to the top 32! The second stage was held this past week and again, it consisted of a ranking round and eliminations. This time, only the top 13 (per gender) along with the 3 men and 3 women who went to the Olympics advance to the next stage.
