It’s British Pathé Tuesday, and I’ve dug up a brief clip from the London Olympics of 1908. Naples was originally scheduled to host the event before a devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius sunk that plan. London rose to the challenge, and organised a games in two years flat, building a single new stadium that held almostevery event – there was a pool in the middle for the swimming events and raised platforms for the boxing, wrestling etc. Compare and contrast with what is happening in Rio.
There is just a brief clip of the women’s event here, although the whole thing is worth watching:
At the 1908 Summer Olympics, three archery events were contested. Great Britain sent 41 archers, France sent 15 men, and the United States sent one man. There were three archery events – the continental style, dominated by France, the men’s double York round, won by Britain’s William Dod, and the women’s double National round, won by Britain’s Queenie Newall – with William Dod’s sister Lottie Dod taking silver. Britain were always going to win the women’s event – all 26 entrants were British.
Queenie Newall.
On the first day of the archery competition the weather in White City Stadium was so poor that the event was stopped at one point. On the close of the first day Queenie was behind Dod by ten points. The second day’s weather was much improved and Queenie overtook Dod, eventually winning with a score of 688 points, 46 points ahead of Dod who finished in the silver medal position. The victory made Queenie the oldest woman to win an Olympic medal, at the age of 53 years and 275 days, a record which still stands.
Queenie’s main rival, Alice Legh declined to compete at the London Olympics in order to prepare for her defence of the national title a week later. She successfully defended the title against Newall, the Olympic gold medal winner, by a large margin.
After the 1908 Olympics, no female British archer won an Olympic medal until Alison Williamson won the bronze in the women’s individual competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Answer: Shooting… in Korea. The picture above was put up by the Korean Archery Association on their Facebook page today, as the ranking round took place at the Yuanshen Stadium.
Many people have noticed the absence of a Korean recurve team at the current Shanghai World Cup stage (although the KAA has sent a compound squad). It’s almost ‘our’ equivalent of Brazil or Germany deciding to skip the football World Cup. Meh, we’ll sit this one out. These are the facts: the dates of the Shanghai and Medellin stages were moved at the end of last year, and the KAA had already arranged for this week to be their selection shoot for the upcoming Asian Games. The above eight got picked today. Stick your money on them now. (There is compound archery in the Asian Games as well this year, but I guess they are picking that team some other time.)
The Korean team frequently skip one or more stages of the World Cup, presumably because they are sure they can get enough points for the grand final in two competitions. Apparently this year they will be in Medellin and Antalya, but not Wroclaw, because this year the Wroclaw date clashes with a national shoot in Korea. Clearly, they can’t be bothered with these tuppenny-hapenny international tournaments when there’s serious work to be done at home – and of course, the standard of competition is likely to be higher. It’s a wonderfully intransigent statement to the archery world. “You fit round us, we don’t fit round you.” But it’s also a shame for the archery audience, because it lessens the sporting spectacle when the biggest dog in the fight doesn’t show up.
I do like the exclamation-mark-riddled way Chrome has translated the KAA Facebook page below. Seems to sum the above up pretty well:
Alison Williamson MBE, six-times Olympian, Olympic bronze medallist in 2004, and twice Commonwealth Games silver medallist, has retired. There will be no seventh Olympics. More here. Listen to her interview on BBC Radio Stoke below. It’s a good reminder of just how difficult it is to stay at the top in professional archery:
It’s a sad day for The Infinite Curve when Ki Bo Bae, reigning Olympic champion, and number two in the world, hasn’t made it onto the Korean squad for this year, after failing to make the top eight during the selection shoot this week. Perhaps even more surprising, Yun Ok Hee, last year’s World Cup champion and world number one failed to make the top eight too. This means neither is likely to shoot in the upcoming World Cup events or the Asian Games this summer. The top eight in women’s recurve included some better known names like Joo Hyun-Jung and Chang Hye-Jin, and the men’s list was pretty familiar. But there’s a big Ki Bo Bae shaped hole in the calendar this year.
It’s always difficult trying to pull information in English off the internet about Korean archers. I don’t think any of us who aren’t in the system have the faintest idea what it takes to get into, let alone stay in the Korean national team – it’s frequently described as ‘harder than winning the Olympics’.
Even via the joys of Korean -> English machine translation, it’s pretty brutal. “Aces are eliminated, the Association recommends always talk [when] the national team players are out. Exceptions, but when you start putting it into a precedent. Principles as the existing players to get the stimulus, can be daunting to new players. Yun Ok Hee, and Ki Bo Bae also a star through such a process.” Ouch.
The fact that the Korean sports press are asking these questions seems to suggest that the archery public are going to miss Ki and Yun, and there is a perception that the KAA should find a way to get them onto the team. It certainly would be a blow to the Asian Games to run a competition without two reigning champions in the ‘majors’. There is, however, a lot to be said for brutal transparency in sporting selection, given the opaque nature of the procedures employed by some archery NGBs and several other sports on a similar ‘level’ as archery e.g. this pre-London 2012 row over taekwondo.
Still, looking forward to that comeback in 2015, otherwise I guess it’s back to the bizarre entertainment shows. Unless it’s time for that previously mentioned move to London? We can dream.
The Infinite Curve: bringing you all the vaguely archery-related Winter Olympic content. This is the ‘bow and arrow’ freestyle skiing manouvre performed by Dara Howell on her way to a slopestyle gold medal at Sochi this morning. I’ve watched it a few times, and I can’t ‘see’ it myself. Nor did the commentators, apparently – although they’ve not been covering themselves in glory these Games. See what you think!
Anyway, I’m proper stuck into the curling now, where #TeamGB have a good shot at a medal in both the men’s and women’s event. Let’s face it, it’s basically archery on ice, isn’t it? 😉
Pictograms have been a part of Olympic design since they were first formally introduced at Tokyo ’64 – although they were employed by the IOC before that and have been a part of human communication since human beings have existed.
The stylised figures are designed to communicate information to all languages and cultures simply and unambiguously. They have to work at all sizes and in negative. In the connected 21st century they may be less vital to worldwide Olympic communication, but they are still a cornerstone of Olympic design, and often as a specific cultural expression too.
Here’s the Winter set for Sochi, just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about:
The Sochi set is based on the pictograms for the Moscow 1980 Summer Games. Come with me, and let’s have a look what designers worldwide for the Summer Games have come up with for the world’s oldest sport.
TOKYO 1964
The first systematically designed set of pictograms for both sports and services was created for the Tokyo Games in 1964 by Masasa Katzumie and Yoshiro Yamashita, although there wasn’t an archery competition that year. This guy is a bit heavy-set for an archer, kind of Oh shaped, but no athlete comes across as very elegant in this set. Full marks for a quiver though, the last design that would bother. Not sure what’s attached to his hand though.
MEXICO 1968
There wasn’t an archery competition this year; the ‘target face’ below is for the shooting competition. Shame, because Mexico ’68 remains my favourite overall Olympic design by some distance.
MUNICH 1972 and MONTREAL 1976
The pictograms designed by Otl Aicher for the Munich games were re-used four years later, and the full set is considered a design classic, endlessly copied and hugely influential on all that came after. Best of all, the archery competition was reintroduced after a 52 year absence. Unlike all the other little guys, we have someone shooting from behind. The head shouldn’t be at that angle, and the legs are waaah, but hey. It gives the impression of full draw, of effort. Of movement.
MOSCOW 1980
Nikolai Belkow won the competition held amongst students at Moscow art colleges to design the full set. Big stance, and rear elbow at some sort of realistic angle. The alignment is strong and relaxed. The flatter, rectangular shapes used that year added dynamism. Damn, this one is good. Also gave rise to a frankly covetable pin:
LOS ANGELES 1984
Not much to write home about here. Does the job, I suppose. Designed by Keith Bright, this was the first Games where a specific design brief has been handed down along with the full set, which is worth a read:
Clear communication; pictograms, by themselves, should be recognizable by people of other nations.
Consistency; the pictograms should be identifiable as a set, through uniform treatment of scale, style and subject.
Legibility and practicality; they should be highly visible, easy to reproduce in any scale and in positive or negative form.
Flexibility; the pictograms should not be dependent upon a border and should work equally well in a positive or negative form.
Design distinction; the pictograms should avoid stylistic fads or a commercial appearance and should imply to a worldwide audience that Los Angeles has a sophisticated, creative culture.
Compatibility; they should be attractive when used with their Los Angeles Olympic design elements and typestyles.
Via 1stmuse.com, here is some detail on how designs like these evolve: “In creating the new pictograms, exploratory sketches examined the use of partial figures, realistic figure images and speed lines combined with the figures. It was concluded that partial figures and realistic figures were difficult to decipher and movement associated with the figures made them too busy and impaired legibility. A simple figure composed of 10 fundamental body parts worked well: a circle for the head, an oval for the torso and eight simple parts representing the arms and legs. This modular figure, when placed against a grid pattern, could be recreated in any desired position, effectively portraying any Olympic event.”
SEOUL 1988
Full set here. Not much of an improvement on LA. I suppose the elbow is ‘better’. Once again, the designers used a standardised geometric pattern for the head, torso and limbs, with a slightly curious ’empty’ torso. This had excellent clarity and economy, especially in negative. But the retreads on 1972 were getting a bit tired. Luckily, four years later…
BARCELONA 1992
For the Barcelona Games they brought back in pictogram hero Otl Aicher. He based his work on the great logo design of Josep. M. Trias and its representation of the human body in three parts, with a broad brush stroke. This thing moves. It’s like someone dancing while drawing a bow. Great job. Full set here.
ATLANTA 1996
This archer is actually pretty good, poised firm, with his short bow and strong ‘open’ stance, but it’s a bit of a mixed year otherwise:
The canoe kayak looks like a trouser press, the handball looks like basketball, the wrestling like pat-a-cake and the judo like one of those Rorschach inkblots. Must try harder!
SYDNEY 2000
Again strongly based on the main Games logo, every single one of the full set of pictograms incorporates at least one boomerang. Was this really necessary? It obviously became a bit of a personal design challenge at points. Mr. Archer looks a bit heavy in the lower regions. Either that, or he’s wearing MC Hammer trousers. Full marks for the nods to an actual recurve bow, and the colour.
ATHENS 2004
The Creative Repository states this: “The Athens… pictograms were inspired by three elements of ancient Greek civilization. The simplicity of the human form is inspired by the Cycladic figurines. The artistic expression of the pictogram derives from the black-figure vases, where solid black shapes represent the human body and a single line defines the detailing of the form.” I say Mr. Archer lacks a bit of energy. Meh. Full set here.
BEIJING 2008
The design team based the pictograms on an ancient Chinese script. Full set here. Immensely simple, joyful, and communicative. First class. This also marked the first year that a full set of pictograms was designed for the Paralympics, with similar grace and economy:
LONDON 2012
The year the world turned purple. Well, we finally have an ‘Olympic’ recurve bow, with a sight (set to about the right place!) and a stabiliser. Terrible technique though, leaning back – either that or the perspective is a bit unclear. The riser does look a lot like a classic chunky Hoyt Gold Medalist or very similar:
…which suggests that the designers were looking at some very old pictures when they blocked it out.
I’m generally ambivalent about all the London 2012 design. The much-maligned logo grew on me a lot, although the font they used never did. A full set of London 2012 pictograms and lots more stuff here. (If you haven’t yet read my reviews of the three archery sessions I attended, you could do that here, here and here.)
RIO 2016
Full set here. “The pictograms are set within pebble shapes, “which are a characteristic of Rio 2016’s visual language, support the designs and alter their shape according to the athletes’ different movements.” Righto. I’m guessing the designers were finally looking at some arrow-leaving-the-bow-shots when they conceptualised this, a product of the high-speed digital photography age. I do love the taekwondo one, more than the slightly un-dynamic archery designs:
TOKYO 2020
The Tokyo pictograms, created by a team led by Japanese designer Masaaki Hiromura, were finally unveiled on 12 March 2019, and the bare-bones archery one is looking strong .The draw with the anchor point ‘below’ the head just possibly might be giving a nod to kyudo, the traditional Japanese archery martial art.
The traditional feel extends to the simple arc shape of the bow, although a kyudo bow is asymmetrical. It looks more like a longbow. Actually, it looks most like a PVC pipe bow than anything else. (It should be noted, if you scroll back up, that only a tiny handful of designs have depicted a recurve bow).
It communicates the sport well, although archery is lucky in that it has a single universal symbolic image to depict – several other Olympic sports, such as wrestling and modern pentathlon, struggle to be squeezed into a tiny square.
This is the Paralympic pictogram:
The full set is below:
On first impressions, I don’t think Hiromura has delivered a classic set for the ages. It’s kind of a hybrid, taking the basic body part vector building blocks of Aicher et al (see above) and tries to impart in them a bit of grace and movement. There’s a focus on the athletes more than the sports these days, and a set like Mexico ’68 (still, in my opinion, the greatest complete piece of Olympic design ever) wouldn’t get through a committee.
The Tokyo set is also kind of a ‘greatest hits’ of Olympic pictograms. Many seem to nod back to previous sets, especially Atlanta ’96, which appears to have been the inspiration for several, including, perhaps, our square-on archer.
The taekwondo one seems to be borrowed from Rio (scroll up). However, he has come up with a few originals. I really like several of them: baseball and table tennis especially. And full marks for a blank-slate attempt at skateboarding. But modern pentathlon and triathlon? They look like something you’d wipe off a kitchen surface.
As a complete set, it is a little conservative. You feel it could show a little more personality, a little more of the host nation. And the design exercise can add a little colour and joie de vivre to the meet – this brilliant and fun Jelly Babies set from the last Youth Olympic Games proves it.
But after the debacle of the logo a couple of years back, it is clear that the LOCOG design committee in Japan are taking no chances.
Pictograms are a major undertaking these days, particularly as each one now has to be approved by each sporting federation. The Tokyo ones apparently took two years from start to finish. As well as the individual sports, pictograms are produced for all sorts of ancillary Games services – some more successfully than others. Designers in the internet age now come up with their own sets which they hope will go viral. You may enjoy this video by Steven Heller, too.
This post has been heavily reliant on work done by the Creative Repository, the works of 1stmuse.com here, Olympic-Museum.de, and many other helpful uploaders. Thanks very much!
Yay! Danish international and recent World Cup bronze medallist Carina Rosenvinge was kind enough to answer my questions as she prepares for the World Championships in Belek in a couple of weeks time. You can find her personal website here and her excellent Twitter feed here.
How’s it going?
Things have been stressed lately. On July 1st I started my education to become a sales assistant. It takes 2 years and it has me working 37 hours a week, which doesn’t always work well with archery. Fortunately the department store I work for has agreed to fewer working hours for a couple of weeks so that I had time to practice for Wroclaw and also for the World Championships next month in Turkey. I now work around 25 hours a week with a couple of days off, which allows me to practice more. I also recently moved into my own apartment. I used to live with my parents, so it’s been a lot of adjusting to new things on my end. Things are starting to calm down – but Christmas is just around the corner and that’s ALWAYS a busy time of year when you work in a store.
Tell us about Wroclaw.
Due to working a lot I didn’t feel well prepared for Wroclaw. I managed to find my way in to making good shots during practice and my individual eliminations and made really good shots and scores during my matches. I made it to 1/16 with a good match against Kumari, with 28-27-28-29-17 on my scoreboard. I was happy with that! As for teams, we couldn’t have asked for a better test run before the World’s. Anne Marie, Maja and I shot teams way back in our cadet years in a European champs back in 2007. We make a great team. We have a lot of fun both on and off the field and it payed off in Wroclaw with a bronze medal. We shot really good against the Russians all things considering. Tricky field with tricky wind, “new” team and all of us new to the World Cup scene when it comes to shooting for metal.
You are gearing up for the World Championships. What does a practice day look like around now?
My practice days are very different! I’ve had a hard time adjusting to the working schedule and it cost me quite a set back on the field. A lot of things happen causing me to practice differently than what I would prefer. It also depends on whether or not I’m working. I shoot for 4-5 hours, mostly on 70 meter. Tomorrow I have a day off and I will be shooting a full FITA round. This coming weekend we have a training weekend with the national coach.
Have you ever been to Korea?
I have been in Korea a couple of times, both for a training camp at Coach Kim’s archery training school and also for the World Champs back in 2009. It was my second seniors tournament and I came back to Denmark with a 7th place. I was only 18 and I was so excited!
Is there anyone else’s shooting you really admire?
I admire lots of other shooting athletes! To be a top archer – and any other athlete for that matter – you have to put in a lot of time and effort and I admire anyone who has the strength and will power to put up with the frustrations that follow with pursuing your dream. It’s hard work. It’s blood, sweat and tears but if you want it enough, it’s all worth it in the end.
Do you ever shoot field archery, 3D, compound, traditional archery etc. ?
I only shoot target archery.
Is archery growing in Denmark like everywhere else?
Denmark had an Olympic archery BOOM as a cause of the success we had at the 2012 Olympics. It was an amazing experience to compete in the Olympics and being able to do something for my sport and my country simply by doing what I love was great. Archery is fun!
Do you have any ideas how would you make international archery better for spectators?
I think it gets better time by time. At the Olympics the final field was probably as good as it gets. Stands for spectators on each side of the field and a big screen for cool video shots of the archers and the targets. It was a big set up, but it would be cool if it could be like that for every tournament.
So… why archery?
My brother did it and I was so sick and tired of him doing good and always being in the papers. I asked my mom if I would get in the paper if I did good in archery too. She said yes and I wanted to do archery. I also wanted to do and be good at something not a lot of other people do (in Denmark anyway).
What’s on your running playlist?
As in, for when I go running? Something LOUD with a good beat. Something Chris Brown and Rihanna, always. I mostly listen to Chris Brown, Rihanna and Trey Songz. I am an R’n’B kinda girl, for sure!
Tell us a Danish joke.
I don’t think it would translate all that well. I’m really more of a sarcastic kinda funny 😉
So myself and Mlle. Infinite Curve were having a coffee at lunchtime when she nudged me and said ‘Look what’s on the TV!”. Archery actually on the BBC news; Danielle Brown’s win at the AGB National Series followed by a familiar “you gonna do the Olympics then?” question, all on a proper BBC News 24 sports insert. Dani is always all kinds of awesome, and seeing her up there with Wiggo and Andy Murray instead of a mention in a tiny, tiny column at the back of the paper felt… good. Things have changed.
A year ago today I went to Lords Cricket ground for the last of three sessions at the Olympic archery venue.
3rd and final session for me at Lords, the women’s individual final. The place is almost beginning to feel like home. I chat with some of the gamesmakers I’ve seen in the past couple of days. In a couple of days it will be Super Saturday, the finest day in British Olympic history and the trigger for an avalanche of gold medals for Team GB. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be for the archery first team, which I wrote about here. The quarters and semis are good; I particularly enjoyed Khatuna Lorig’s gutsy performance, unfortunately Mariana Avitia was as inspired as Aida Roman and denied her the bronze. The amusing sight of the divided loyalties of the Mexican coach in the semis. The feverish Korean support in the stands.
But it came down to the wire. A shoot-off. Brutal. A lottery. A friend of mine described is as ‘like a darts match where you decide the winner as shooting to see who is closest to the bull’, and he had a point. It is too hard, almost ridiculous. There must be a better way that satisfies the needs of the schedule and the timings. Three-arrow shoot off? Total X’s? Another end then sudden death? All would be fairer. It reduces the sport.
There was an sound that is still with me of the flag eyelets, the symbols of the games, rattling on the top of the stands. A kind of gentle tinkling. Slightly exotic. I recorded some audio on my phone that day too, takes me right back, anyway. Here you go:
But the last shot seemed to sum up the whole day; close and narrow. No one dominating. When Ki Bo Bae shot first, she seemed to have finally succumbed to the weight of expectation, her coach massaging her shoulders. Actually, you could see her tension building through the day. The wind really picked up and swirled menacingly just before she went to the line, and she held for just a couple of seconds too long before sending down that eight. Everyone gasps. She shakes her head. The wind? Nerves? Who knows. It’s with the djinns.
So it was Aida Roman’s to lose. A she drew, and held, and held… and held… and held. The pressure had won. Normally fairly metronomic, she could not release. You could feel the shot slipping away from her. She held for nearly nine seconds, the clock gave her only three more and that eight wasn’t, of course, close enough.
Watch it again, if you can. You can see it going, in those few seconds. The tiny, tiny things that decide everything. Both of the Mexican women had shot brilliantly (and since then, their performance has been further recognised) but the tournament had gone back to the script. The place erupts. It was meant to be; capping an already dominant Korean performance and setting the stage for Oh’s gritty performance the next day. A great sporting moment. So, close. So, so close.
Today was a big club outing, we are all in a grand mood and we hit the pub and then a restaurant with the booze flowing. But I’m stuck with the image of Ki Bo Bae stood on the podium for the Korean national anthem, as the (correct) flag was raised, fighting back the tears. She seemed so tiny, and you could still see the mark of the string pressed into her face.
A year ago today I went to Lords Cricket ground for the second of three sessions at the Olympic archery venue. Here’s to the memories.
Back to Lords again. Same stand. Almost the same seats. It really is a great venue, compact, easy to get in and out of, pretty, great noise, nice pubs nearby… Apparently, last year, Im Dong-Hyun was asked what he knew of London ahead of the 2012 Games. He replied “Two things. It’s always raining and it’s a country of gentlemen.” The words ‘gentleman’ and ‘Lords’ remain almost as bound as Compton & Edrich. Perhaps they could have picked an even more dramatic location for the archery – Battersea Power Station, maybe, or Hampton Court Palace (which would have been entirely appropriate) – but Lords turned out to be a first-class arena to see it in, really, even if the archers complained about the wind patterns.
It was an exciting day, despite the lack of a final. I got to see Brady Ellison shoot amazingly against Mark Javier, and then collapse against Taylor Worth. (Although Taylor also knocked out Alan Wills; naturally, an Australian knocking out an Englishman at Lords cannot possibly be acceptable 😉 ). I saw Simon Terry demolish a well-ranked Japanese archer, and then fall to a 16 year-old from Moldova. And I got to see Ki Bo Bae, as the top ranked shooter, shoot against the bottom ranked shooter Rand Al-Mashhadani, from Iraq, in a hijab, who had got in as a wildcard by making the minimum qualifying standard – a sporting mismatch of almost Biblical proportions. She looked nervous as hell, and kept drawing and then coming down again. The British public responded as they always do to an underdog, with massive cheering support. She lost 6-0. Makes you proud.
This is probably the best picture I took, just as the light and the shadows started to look awesome on the field. No rain today.
So afterwards I’m ambling, slightly drunkenly (it was sunny, and there was beer) along the street behind Lords as the stadium is emptying, and there’s a little yelp from a couple of Korean teenagers in front of me. And… oh my living God… Ki Bo Bae and Kim Bub Min are walking down the road. In front of us.
So Kim Bub Min ends up taking a picture of me and Ki Bo Bae, right there. Jesus. That’s like Boris Becker taking a picture of you and Steffi Graf. He even takes a couple because I’m looking down in the first one. What a nice guy. She looks a bit scared, I look a bit creepy. We make a wonderful pair.
So they spoke to me in Korean, and I gave them a good luck, and they wandered off to more signing and photos. Why are these people wandering around in the street? I mean, these people are… Usain Bolt doesn’t just go and get the tube back to his hotel after his heats, does he?
Video today: Worth v Ellison last 16. Read about it here.
