Barebow at the World Games 2017. Pic by Dean Alberga / World Archery.
July has been and gone. Quieter than the World Cup frenzy of May and June, it saw the World Games take place in Wroclaw in Poland, scene of several previous World Cups.
The World Games, if you’ve forgotten, are a multi-sport event every four years designed to provide a platform for sports and disciplines that don’t get contested at the Olympics. It’s often seen as a stepping stone to wider international acceptance, too. The archery meet featured recurve and barebow field events, and a compound target event. A lot of familiar names turned up, but it’s best you read the extremely extensive coverage over at World Archery. Brady Ellison expounded his love of field to Inside The Games after the recurve sessions – but, you know, he said he was probablyย going back to compoundย a couple of years ago. ๐
The biggest Olympics news of all was that the next two countries to host the summer Olympics after Tokyo have been selected, after months of rumours and behind-the-scenes horse trading. It’ll be #Paris2024 and #LosAngeles2028, both hosting the Games for the third time.
You will remember, of course, that Paris will likely be putting the archery competition on at the Esplanade des Invalides in the (relative) centre of the city:
A weird aside: see those two figures in the number one lane? Whoever the artist is, they ย *seem* to have based them on – and I’m not absolutely sure why or how they got there – a really not-very-good picture of Chang Hyejin and then coach Rye Soo Jung that I took in Wroclaw in 2013. Of all things.
I’m guessing that’s because they’re full length and fairly easy to remove from the background. Photoshop priorities!
This pic shows the Esplanade des Invalides on the right, and on the other side of the bridge, the Grand Palais where they will be holding the fencing and taekwondo. This is excellent news: the archery will be at the very heart of the city and in the centre of the action.
Los Angeles will be building a custom venue – ‘Stadium Lake’ – at the under construction LA Stadium at Hollywood Park. ย Dean Alberga will have to swim to take pictures. ๐
2024 and 2028 will probably be the last of the single-city Games, as almost all bids going foward increasingly involve more than one location – and rightly so, as the 21st century Olympics is too much of a burden on the tax base of even a major world city these days. The Olympic s of the the 2030s and on will probably look something like this.
By far my most shared story of the month was about the 35th running of the President’s competition, the biggest annual Korean domestic competition; and it’s most salient, terrifying fact: in the senior recurve division ranking, twenty men and thirty-nine women shot 1350 or above, the mark long considered the definition of world elite. That number doesn’t include a couple of dozen high school students who also made that score.
Most countries in the world have perhaps two or three recurve archers who can shoot 1350 on a regular basis – if that. The sheer strength in depth – and the deep commitment to the full FITA as a mark of quality – isn’t going away any time soon.
Also, for the first time ever, the President’s competition saw a mixed team round shot. Think it’s related to this announcement at all? ๐ It will also be part of the Asian Games next year in 2018, an event the Korea Archery Association take almost as seriously as the Olympics.
August: the Berlin World Cup will soon be upon us, and in just one month the World Cup Final in Rome. You can check the movers and shakers who’ll likely be at that over here – and frankly, it’s going to look quite a lot like last year in Odense.ย You can read a little more about Berlin and what’s going to happenย in the preview I wrote earlier this year over on Dutch Target.ย ย I’m not going to be at this one, unfortunately. Hope the audience tops the slightly paltry Salt Lake crowd, too.
OLYMPICS BONUSES!
Have a look at 51sprints.com, an amazing website about track athletics, who wins and why.
Also, enjoy Misha, perhaps the greatest mascot ever, from a slightly less spectacular time; Moscow 1980. Bye!
So winning an Olympic gold medal or two means you have to do all sorts of bad TV. Very long, but with English subs. (Still, unlike four years ago, at least they don’t have to sing.)
This is the transcript of an TV interview with Ki Bo Bae and Chang Hyejin from the 18th August, revealing, apparently, that the archery team came home early because they were worried about their safety in Rio. Has a few interesting details, although the anchor guy, frustratingly, doesn’t follow up with a couple of tougher questions about selection transparency and elite sporting achievement. Neither of them look very comfortable there.
(It’s often forgotten that recurve target archery in Korea, is a small, elite programme, not a mass-participation sport with channels towards the national side as it is in Europe or America. The same question about whether money should go less towards elite sport in Korea could be directed, in the UK, to track cycling or perhaps rowing – although the source of the money might be different, and just like here, the athletes are probably not the best people to answer it.)
As for the gunfire that Hyejin heard, well, she wasn’t the only person at the Sambodromo to hear some in August. ๐
You can watch the original video here. If there are any Korean readers who think there is a mistake in translation, let me know.
At Fact Check, the rankings were much discussed. We are not a station that broadcasts the Olympics. But our guests today (the 18th) are two people we really wanted to meet. Our archery team has gained a reputation across the world. This year for the first time our archery team swept both the male-female team competition and individual competition in terms of gold medals. The fact that they won gold medals isnโt really the most important thing here, but we should recognize their efforts.
So today we have two people who are the topics of a lot of discussion: the athletes Ki Bo-bae and Jang Hye-jin. Welcome.
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery (Gwangju City Hall): Iโm tired now because I havenโt really adjusted to the time difference, but Iโm spending my time happily with my family.
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery(Gwangju City Hall: We stayed until the closing ceremony at the last London Olympics. Because we were concerned about the public peace this time at the Brazil Olympics, we went home early.
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: Behind our archery center there was a poor village. During the match, we heard a bang bang sound, and at first we were like โWhatโs that noise?โ So we asked the people there, and they said it was gunfire. So we were a little scared.
Thatโs a relief. You probably would have felt uncomfortable had you known it was gunfire. Did you also think it was just firecrackers, Miss Ki Bo-bae?
If thatโs the case, I feel like no one would have been around at the closing ceremony. It seems that way to me. While you were there, especially after you won the team event, some stories began to come out saying that our archery selection manager is very transparent and rational. People have even said that if other people in our society were like him, we would live much better. Is he really as thorough as I have just described? What I mean is, in the selection process, itโs not like anyone has advantages based off their connections?
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery (LH): Yes, the selection competition is really fierce; we first have to shoot well unconditionally and be able to get a score of 10. Thereโs nothing that changes as a result of our connections.
[์ต์ปค] [Anchor]
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: Because I didnโt even get to fourth place, I wasnโt selected, and I really regretted it. It was pretty hard, and I think Iโm sitting in this chair today because I overcame my personal deficiencies from that time.
It seems you would have felt that the strongest. You did well this time because you couldnโt get the top four last time. You did it through a rational system. When you look at it, isnโt our archery team the result of a great system and personal effort meeting and benefiting from the synergy they createโin an environment like ours, thatโs not really easy, you know. Right? As you know, in the past at other events, all types of stories came out, including some scandals. What do you think about how it was settled as far as archery is concerned, Miss Ki Bo-bae?
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery (Gwangju City Hall)]: Of course, an athlete’s personal ability is not the only important thing. Whether you call it back-up or regard it as the material and emotional support of an association, I think you need that type of support in order to obtain good results.
[์ต์ปค] [Anchor]
๊ทธ ์ง๋ฌธ ๋๋ฆฐ ๊ฑด ์๋๋ฐ.
Thatโs not the question I asked, though.
[๊ธฐ๋ณด๋ฐฐ ๊ตญ๊ฐ๋ํ/์๊ถ(๊ด์ฃผ์์ฒญ) : ์, ๊ทธ๋์?]
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery (Gwangju City Hall)]: Oh, really?
You really do seem nervous. So when our team selects athletes, we do so just looking through thoroughly objective results? Thereโs no consideration of the connections one has or ageโselections are made just purely based on ability? That doesnโt seem easy in our cultural climate, but our archer team has managed it. Would you call this an impetus of archery? Or is it the background of our teamโwhich one? Is the question too hard?
Shall we not discuss it? Okay. Weโll just drop this topic. Because actually you always come without having the need to think about this type of stuff, you might not know the answer. I asked because I personally thought it was amazing. Letโs drop this topic, though. Okay. Then, it looks like I have to ask one more difficult question. Anyone can answer. During this Olympics, some stories came out comparing us to Japan, saying that it would be better for us in the long term to move towards societal physical education rather than focus on just elite physical education. These opinions have been floating about, and Iโm really curious to know how you two would respond. Is this also a hard question?
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: If you had to say it in just one word, do you mean something like recreational sports, popular events, and popular events?
Iโm saying athletes are selected this way [though elite physical education] and thoroughly maintainedโฆright? There are opinions that instead of following our current system, expanding the recruiting base is more important. Itโs not inaccurate, you know. I will also dump this question.
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: But I think if you compare Korea with other countries, we have a great process for selecting athletes because we discover them as early as elementary school. So I think that because of this our archery team is more skilled than those of other nations.
Thatโs right. Thatโs a great aspect. Iโm of the opinion that it would be great for us to move in that direction for all sports, not just archery. I will now ask the next question to Miss Ki Bo-bae. Are you nervous?
I was wondering about this: is it important to do archery based off your feelings, or is it more important to be formally thorough and calculative when you shoot the bow? For example, is it important for an athlete to rely on her senses when she shoots?
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery (Gwangju City Hall)]: When you look at it, there are environmental factors that you need to take into consideration, such as the wind. You need to calculate these, but I think the athleteโs senses are more important. External factors are just something the archer needs to sense with her body, so I think the athleteโs senses should be considered the most important.
There are probably people who canโt do it if they formally calculate, right? Feelings are probably the most important factor. So I will ask you, Miss Jang Hye-jin, people say your unique trait is that it doesnโt take you long to shoot your bow. Is that true?
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: When my condition is good, Iโm really quick, and like Bo-bae just said, archers who rely on their senses each have their own sense of feeling. When that feeling is bad, my timing also takes longer.
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery(LH)]: While we pull the bow and release it from our hands, we feel it in our fingers. When we release it, we feel โThis will be a score of 10 or a score of 9.โ We have this type of feeling.
It seems like youโve solved it now. Sorry. Earlier I worried that I was making you even more nervous by asking you such difficult questions as soon as we met, but now that youโve solved that one, Iโm relieved. Iโm interviewing today for the first time in a long time, and it seems Iโm still really distant. Iโm without any know-how. Do you also feel that same feeling in your hands, Miss Ki Bo-bae?
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery(Gwangju City Hall)]: We have an expression between us archers. To us, it feels like we shoot the same bow every time, and we shoot it over 400 times every day. We sometimes ask how it is that despite this, it feels different every time we shoot.
Thatโs right. I also broadcast every day, but the feeling is different every time. When you put it that way, I can understand it.ย And I also feel that when you look at it like that, itโs not really something that everyone can doโarchery, I mean.
Is that so? That makes you seem even more amazing. I forgot to mentionโis the athlete Choi Mi-seon also doing well? I know she couldnโt come today; did she go back to her home in Gwangju?
The viewers told Choi Mi-seonโs team that it would have been nice if she could come as well, seeing as she is one of the best. It would have been great to have had you all come together, but you must have been a little sad after your individual competitions ended. Did she comfort you a lot?
[๊ธฐ๋ณด๋ฐฐยท์ฅํ์ง/์๊ถ ๊ตญ๊ฐ๋ํ : ๋ค.]
[Ki Bo-bae/Jang Hye-jin/Archery National Representatives] Yes.
Okay. I will ask you one more question. Iโve heard that you two have something in commonโthat when you were both young, you had not really distinguished yourselves. So you werenโt that distinguished during middle and high school, but you gradually bettered yourselves later onโฆ So when you first started, did you feel frustrated when you watched archers who were really good? What was it that you had to overcome? Miss Ki Bo-bae?
[Ki Bo-bae National Representative/Archery (Gwangju City Hall)]: I really suffered a serious slump in high school. When I watched the other really good athletes, I was really jealous of them. I always wondered if I could someday win a gold medal like them, but I always kept moving forward step-by-step and gave it my all. The result is that I overtook those friends and eventually came to stand at the top.
[์ต์ปค] [Anchor]
์ฅํ์ง ์จ๋์?
You, too, Miss Jang Hye-jin?
[์ฅํ์ง ๊ตญ๊ฐ๋ํ/์๊ถ(LH) : ๋ค.]
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery (LH)]): Yes.
[์ต์ปค] [Anchor]
๋ค, ํด ๋ฒ๋ฆฌ์๋ฉดโฆ.
Yes, if you would continueโฆ
[Jang Hye-jin National Representative/Archery (LH)]: I also was first selected as a national representative in 2010. Until that time, I was satisfied with just accomplishing small goals, but in 2009, they chose the top eight representatives. I was in 9th place. Ever since then, Iโve really practiced pretty stubbornly thinking that I also could be one of the top representatives.
[์ต์ปค] [Anchor]
๋์ฟ์ฌ๋ฆผํฝ๋ ๋์ ํ์ค ๊ฑฐ์ฃ , ๋ฌผ๋ก ?
Youโll definitely compete in the Tokyo Olympics as well, right?
If at that time you win in the team competition, it will become three successive victories, Miss Ki Bo-bae. But as you said before, the selection process for representatives is really harsh and intense. Because you have to pass it, I think itโs really difficult to be part of the team. ย You even competed in a place surrounded by gunfire. Youโve really worked hard. I hope you can rest a little now and overcome your jet lag. Thank you so much for coming onto the program today.
Quite a long post today. I’ve been back in the UK for five days, but I’m still dreaming about Rio every night. Odd new sports. Athletes in desperate need of quotes. It’s left an impression on me. I hope it did the same for you.
OK. Firstly,ย the Olympic channel has finally got busy and started putting up videos from the finals on YouTube – although their attention to detail (& logic) leaves something to be desired. You can watch everything currently available on this playlist here.ย Some of the highlights:
Women’s individual final with (I think) BBC commentary here (you may have to click for an external link)
Men’s individual gold medal match here:
Just a bit of the women’s team bronze and gold medal matches here (spoiler alert):
Hardly anyย of the sublime men’s team final here:
…but most of the men’s team bronze match here. Well done Alec and the boys:
Then there’s a really quite funny quiz with Brady Ellison:
So after the match between Chang Hyejin and the North Korean archer Kang Un Ju, the latter sprinted through the press mixed zone like Usain Bolt with two dozen screaming Korean journos reaching after her and gunning the Nikons. Shortly afterwards, I was informed that there was a weird incident involving a dodgy Korean (presumably South) camera crew out the back of the venue trying to interview Un Ju and getting some cables ripped out the back of their camera by her ‘coaches’ (read: minders).
Suffice it to say, both archers were very much expected to win that match, the only direct one-on-one North v South matchup of the entire Games (if I checked correctly). ย Hyejin suggested cooly afterwards: ‘It gathered a lot of attention in our country.ย I had a lot of pressure and I knew that I needed to win it.” whichย I suspect is a grand understatement. It’s a bit of a shame, especially as elsewhere there was a rather sweet story involving North and South Korean gymnasts getting a selfie together.
“I think this is a really iconic Games. It is also a Games in the middle of reality. They were not organised in a bubble. They were organised in a city where there are social problems, social divides, where real life continued and I think it was very good for everybody.
“To be close to reality and not to have it in a bubble for 16 days, the Games somehow being isolated. To be in the middle of it, to see reality and by seeing this to put sport into perspective.” – Thomas Bach, president of the IOC
I’m going to discuss a few things now. I suspect the Rio Games will be remembered for a long, long time, as a major pivotal point in Olympic history. The ‘old model’ is gone.
In the end, despite terrible doomsaying and a handful of dark mishaps, it went off mostly without a hitch – but against an unignoreable backdrop of a city struggling to put on the event financially and a population that seemed to largely, but certainly not completely, turn its back. They did it very much their way. The best bits shone bright, but the empty seats across the board, whether due to disinterest or overpricing or sheer distance from anything else, told a tale which was impossible for a global TV audience to ignore.
Few cities on Earth could have lived up to 2012. ย London sold out almost every ticket across the Games, which no Olympics has ever got close to before , and may never again. The London Paralympics was almost sold out before it started. The British people – belatedly – got fully behind it, seeing sports they’d never heard of, plus London has hundreds of large immigrant communities from all over the worldย which helped to fill seats everywhere. For example, there are over 15,000 Koreans resident in London, who bought a lot of tickets for archery, taekwondo and much else besides. And London is a densely populated, obscenely wealthyย city with a lot more potential for an extended legacy for the infrastructure.
So it was always going to be difficult to follow London (let alone Beijing and/or Sochi), but as many people at home and away have said to me, there seemed to be something missing – a genuine sense of festival, or a sense of the transformative power of sport. For spectators, there was nagging feeling that it might not quite have been worth it. The full competition had many highlights across the board, but without that collective atmosphere, that powerful sense of identity.
In Rio, the threat of Zika and crime scared off more casual tourists, whatever the milder reality might have been. The tickets were far tooย expensive, justย as they were for working people in London, but Brazilย is in a horrible recession with rampant unemployment – and there were many other issues over the buildup that I’m sure you’ve already read about over and again. And I’m not sure if anyone realises quite how long-term toxic the wider issues with doping in athletics, the flagship of the fleet, have been to the Olympics overall.
A less-mentioned problemย is a general lack of Olympic cultural identity. Britain (for example) has a long legacy and cultural memory of Olympic participation and success, from Coe and Ovett and Thompson in the 80s, Redgrave & Backley in the 90s etc. It’s a part of the culture, and there are collective memories of it and being part of it.
yeah, I went up it. like everyone else (it was brilliant)
It’s a shame, but many Brazilians just don’t have that sense of the Olympicsย as being something the country is involved in, where Brazil plays a part in the narrative. (They love some sports – ย football, of course, and volleyball; the only two sports that really shifted a lot of tickets). But a lot of the rest of it just didn’t register as something youย could play a part in, and the average person in Rio had more pressing things on their mind.
When even the athletics session for Usain Bolt running the 100m, an event watched by two billion people in 2012,ย isn’t sold out, you know something isย veryย wrong. ย (It didn’t help that, due to TV demands, the athletics ran very late and finished close to midnight, in a part of town that isn’t the best and is ill-served by public transport).
Ultimately the people spoke, and they said: There are more important things than a canoe slalom course. And of course, they are absolutely right. I still believe in the Olympics as a powerful force for good in the world, as the single time every four years when the world comes together to celebrate what humans can achieve. But it has become, in the 21st century, something that is too simply large, too expensive, and too difficult to impose upon people in its present form.
Believe it or not, when Rio was awarded the Games in 2009, on a grand-scale it seemed like a genuinely brilliant idea. The economy was going through the roof. Oil was at record highs. It fit past Olympic narratives of a national power thrusting fully into the world after a long period in the wilderness. Memories of Tokyo ’64, with a modern industrial nation emerging from losing a war, and similar tales at Seoul in 1988. There’s a strong sense that everybodyย wanted it to work like that;ย Brazil, with all its extraordinary natural advantages and increasing financial clout, finally taking a place at the forefront of the modern world with a Rioย Olympics as a catalyst. Everyone was hopeful.
But there’s a grim proverb popular over there: “Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be.” It didn’t quite happen as intended, for reasons recounted ad nauseam already, and because of that, a lot of rather bright light has been shone on the Olympic movement, the IOC, its legacies and its future.
I count myself very lucky indeed to have been able to visit such a great country with some of the mostย wonderful people I’ve ever met – and Rio itself is a extraordinary place, rugged and difficult, but often exquisitely beautiful, with a manic, creative energy unlike anywhere else on earth. It would be a terrible shame if the legacy isย as grim as manyย are predicting. And when I think about some of the brilliant, brilliant Olympians I met, the athletes who had worked so incredibly hard, and the wonderful staff and volunteers at the Sambodromo, all working to make something amazing, I start welling up once again.
_______________________________________
There’s a gazillion articles out there this week about the wider Olympics. (If you want to keep it frivolous, I recommend this one.)
Some more interesting longread postscript articles you might enjoy:
Last day in the Sambodromo. I’ve been here every day for nearly three weeks. Will be back for the Paralympics next month. Thanks for following along. – John
Taylor Worth, Ku Bonchan
Mark Dellenbach (FRA coach), Jean-Charles Valladont
Theย Sambadrome Marquรชs de Sapucaรญย was built in 1984, as a parade ground for the samba schools in the annual Rio Carnival; there are now ‘Sambadromes’ in several other Brazilian cities. Nearly a kilometre long, it was made by converting an existing street and adding bleachers along its length. ย One end is a large square, where the parades finish; this is now the ranking round and practice range. Immediately next to that is the finals field, where the magic will happen. This is walled off at two ends and much more enclosed than previous Olympic archery venues. A little theatre. I think it’s going to be noisy.
what it looks like at Carnival time. Photo: Nat. Geographic
Unlike all the other Olympic venues in Rio, it’s resolutely urban, stuck in the middle of a working-class neighbourhood called Cidade Nova, currently crawling with police. Bounded to the north by an eight-lane highway, another long freeway runs right down one side, only about twenty yards from our press tent. All around are unclosed roads.
Past the arch, to the south, lie three largeย favelas, the oldest being Morro da Mineira. It’s an oddity that in most places in the world, the rich live up the top of the hill, with housing getting grander the higher you go. In many (but not all) parts of Rio it’s exactly the opposite.
It’s the only Olympic venue where you can see Rio’s most famous icon, the statue of Christ The Redeemer built in the 1930s, merely by looking up from the range – which should give succour to the several Catholics with a shot atย an archery medal.
It’s difficult to say it’s a pretty place. It’s designed to come alive with colour and people and music; a neutral space. It’s a vast,ย monumentallyย brutal bit of concrete surrounded by more crumbling concrete, and much of it is in dire need of a paint job. When you hear it was made by Brazil’s most famous architect, Oscar Niemeyer, at first I thought, well, everyone has a bad day at the office.
Niemeyer is famous for many great buildingsย in Brazil, and one of his last in the 1990s was one of his most lauded, the MAC Contemporary Art Gallery in Niterรณi, a short ferry ride across the bay from central Rio. I went there last week:
I absolutely loved this landed-UFO-cum-Bond-villain-lair showing offย on a short spit of land overlooking Sugarloaf Mountain, although it’s almost too outrรฉ for it’s own good.ย ย No-one visitingย seemed bothered about the rather confusing exhibition currently on display. They’d come to see IT, not what was in it.
Niemeyer, who died in 2012, was famous for his curves – rather like another late Olympic architect, Zaha Hadid, who designed the aquatics centre for London. His most famous quote on the subject goes like this:
I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.
Which seems a bit at odds with the squared off, boxy concrete lines I’m currently spending all day, every day in. But onceย I started nosing around the Sambodromo, I finally started seeing a little of the architect’s vision; the detailing, the shaping and yep, the curves.
I think it’ll be a memorable outing – and I hope for all the right reasons. Our thing, our little corner, has the potential to be something very special, if the weather holds out and the soft winter sunshine makes the concrete glow.
I’m glad it’s here, in this defiantlyย real part of town, and not in some gleaming new arena that’s going to be broken up in a few weeks. It’s a spot withย a bit of soul. Let’s watch what happens together.
The Sambodromo is finally open for training, and the first athletes and teams arrived today: Brazil, India, Malaysia and aย lone archer from Belarus; Anton Prilepov. Especially good to see the home nation out there, looking comfortable and relaxed in the late afternoon sun. (Sunset is at 1730 here).
No other Olympic venue has quite such a dramatic skyline, taking in the spectacular Oscar Niemeyer arch, the Morro De Mineira favela, and Christo Redentor looking down on us all.
(It won’t be that exposed wood behind the targets for ranking or finals, a backdrop is going in this week. There’s a few little details still to go).
More tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Deepika Kumari (note to media organisations – this image is ยฉ The Infinite Curve 2016 and you are NOT free to use it or edit it in any way)
Indian women’s team (note to media organisations – this image is ยฉ The Infinite Curve 2016 and you are NOT free to use it or edit it in any way)
I put together a Spotify playlist of Brazilian music to help you start getting in the mood for Rio. It spans from the 60s to right now, and takes in quite a few of the many genres the country has produced. ย It’s always available on the right hand column of this blog (scroll down). Enjoy!