A year ago today I went to Lords Cricket ground for the first of three sessions at the Olympic archery venue. Here’s to the memories.
At 8.30 this morning I wake up in Berlin, of all places. Long story. Then it’s walk to the station, train, plane, bus, train, tube, bus (to office to dump stuff), bus, tube, and another bus to find myself outside Lords shortly before the 3pm afternoon session with my eight year old nephew. Thanking the transport gods, we go in. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, and it’s probably the first time I’ve properly hung out with him, ever. If I’m going to finally do ‘uncle stuff’, it’s best I kick it off in style: the women’s team Olympic archery final. I sit him down outside and explain how important the day is to the both of us. He’s, like, yeah, whatever Uncle John. I know now he’s more interested in Star Wars, but one day, he’ll thank me.
We are up in stand 2 on the right of the shooting lanes, so we can see the right-handers front on. Good. Unfortunately the Team GB women got knocked out this morning by a rampant Russia. E wants to support someone, but he seems a bit lost as to who until the noise level around us cranks up, and the excitement builds. Korea are shooting. The immense shower that follows rattles no one (it’s the rainiest day of the shoot and leads to some of the more spectacular photographs). No one even flinches. Me and E hide under an umbrella in the bedraggled stand. You wonder if, given the training standards in Korea, seven years ago the developing squad heard something like “Oh, the Olympics is in London? Rainy old London? Right, turn the hoses on…”. As Ki Bo Bae, Lee Sung-Jin and Choi Hyeongju demolish a miserable looking Denmark, E has picked his team. Luckily the two Korean lads in front of us, who have taken a shine to him, have some spare flags and noisemakers.
The rhythms of the team event become gradually familiar as the afternoon winds on. The ‘third’ up first, usually looking the most nervous of the trio, the quick to the mark second, and the grimly determined first, usually the most senior member. The widest shoulders. The anchor. The skip. The one with the most difficult job. As the gold medal match between China and Korea comes up, no one seems to have taken to this role with more fervour than Yuting Fang…
…a 22 year old of terrifying focus and will. Although she is run a close second by the Japanese skip Ren Hayakawa, the string sometimes distorting her face into a terrifying, malevolent rictus grin.
Both pics source: Paul Gilham/Getty Images Europe
The script is for Korea to win, as it has been for decades. But China come incredibly close. It is down to Ki Bo Bae, needing that 9. I remember watching her, and not the arrow, and then listening to the roar. Just another day at the office. Perfect.
VIDEO to follow: Korea v Denmark in the rain, 29/07/12 at Lords Cricket Ground.
YouTube, eh? Where would lazy afternoons at work be without it? There is this incredible 25 minute video of the 1996 Olympic archery competition. The ’96 Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia with the archery portion being held at Stone Mountain Park nearby; a spectacular, brooding backdrop. You can watch it all here:
I like a lot of things about this film. The amazing displays of what would now be considered quite unorthodox techniques (especially releases). The ‘Hollywood’ inserts. The weird split channel audio. There are many highlights: the mixture of horror and bafflement on a Korean archer’s face at shooting a six. Some seriously 90s bow paint jobs. The way Kim Kyung-Wookcomes down, calms down, and recomposes herself to take out a ten and the match – the mental strength, the composure, boggle the mind. In the gold medal match, she takes out the camera in the centre of the ten-ring twice.
It starts getting really good with the men’s individual, though, and the arrival of Justin Huish. The US team (above), in the era before they let half-decent designers do the national team kits, have ended up looking slightly like a local baseball team in a heartwarming underdog movie. Huish, with his wraparounds and his hint-of-Fonzie burns is a curious mix of slacker king and pumped-aggression. There’s something threatening about him.
The semi-final match between his and the legend that is Michele Frangilli (looking, with that glove, and thatdraw-all-over-his-face, like an off-duty Bond villain’s henchman) is a doozy. Watch it all here. The crowd goes apeshit, and does it again for Huish’s semi. You can see him start to respond with more and more passion. By the time he walks out for the final with M Petersson you can see him just drinking it in.
Playing to the crowd, confidence oozing. Writing the script. As the final winds on, he starts increasingly displaying a showy tic of holding his draw hand index finger to his neck. Look at me. It’s all me.
The denoument is a delight. The sight of an athlete responding to an ecstatic crowd, using them as a spur, setting up that feedback loop of confidence is one of the delights of watching sport. That sense of collective drama and tension. Sadly, in archery, you only usually get those kind of crowds once or twice every four years. The quality may be there, but the event is missing. (I was never much of a football fan until someone took me to see Arsenal play in the late 1990s. Standing in the North Bank when the home team scored; the noise is just… narcotic. Like nothing else. As William Blake wrote: “Energy is pure delight.”) I don’t think archery should be like football, but I want those collective feelings. I want that sense of narrative.
The film also contains a melancholic contrast to the earlier displays; in the women’s team competition, the sight of Cornelia Pfohl shooting, and then… ah, I’ll let you watch it. It’s better watched than written about (and watched till the end).
There’s a well-known post-story too. In 2001, Justin Huish’s life took a sharp turn and his archery career fell apart. You can read about that here. He was still shooting in the 2000s, and has been seen at a variety of US tournaments in recent years, including Vegas this year. He was the first male archer to do the ‘double’ of Olympic and team gold in the same year (matched by Ku Bonchan in Rio). Someone should interview him again one of these days.
A preamble: This archery blog has been doing pretty well recently. Hello to you, reading this site for the first or third or tenth time. I’m up to over a thousand hits on a really good day, when I get retweeted/reposted a few times (thank you – you know who you are!). When people start translating your articles into French, you know you’re doing something right…
One of the most gratifying things about blogging is that you know where your audience is coming from. Literally. All over the world:
So this last week, as before, the US and the UK are neck and neck in the lead for page hits. But I’ve also had forty-two hits from Columbia, fourteen from Venezuela, and six from New Caledonia, which I am embarrassed to say I had to look up. Altogether 89 countries. Amazing. Thank you. And testament to the global reach of the sport, practised from the Faroes to Japan. (Only one hit from Korea, though…)
Anyway, this internationalism got me to thinking about my bow. Like most modern recurve bows, it’s made up of interchangeable parts, with standardised fittings (such as ILF limbs), sockets, weights, lengths and so on. It’s not really one thing. What I call ‘my bow’ is actually many things that become one when I assemble it and use it. I made choices about those things, but where they come from is mostly out of my hands. I suddenly wondered how far my bow had travelled.
So I started looking. The riser is a Hoyt Matrix, second hand, 2003 vintage. I love the purple fade. I emailed Hoyt to ask them where it was made, nearly ten years ago, but they didn’t get back to me. Internet nosing suggests all Hoyt bows are made at their facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the USA. That’s 4876 miles from London as the crow flies, not including whatever it did it the ten years it was owned by someone else.
The limbs are by Uukha. EX1 “Carbon Monolith” (#38). These are made, with great care, in France. On their website, they proudly say: “We have chosen to develop our bows in France, and to produce it in our own workshop. We do not have any subcontracts in Asia or Eastern Europe.” Uukha are based in Roubaix, a famous cycling destination, and a mere 180 miles to London. Almost locals.
The stabilisers are Axiom by Sebastian Flute. I emailed them. “The Sf-Archery products are made in the Win & Win factories in Korea and China.In the case of Axiom Stabiliser set, it’s made in China.” The email was actually signed ‘Sebastian Flute’. Nice chap. I don’t know where Win & Win’s factory is, but given that the main industrial centre of manufacturing in China is centred round Shanghai, I’ll take the distance from there. 5727 miles.
The sight and button are made by Shibuya of Tokyo, and the back of the button packet proudly says ‘Made In Japan’. The various Shibuya recurve sights were ubiquitous at London 2012 (according to their website, they were used by over 50% of participants). I have the older, aluminium model. That’s 5979 miles, twice.
The clicker, my wristguard, and my arrow nocks are by Beiter of Dauchingen, Germany. I mailed them and asked if they manufactured their stuff there. “Yes. We do not manufacture anything out of our company; all our vendors are from the region; we do import only the carbon tubes for the stabilizers from the US.” Thank you, Mr. Lorenz. 557 miles, thrice.
The arrows are made by (surprise!) Easton, also of Salt Lake City, Utah. 4,876. I have a set of all-American ACC’s, although apparently they manufacture some of the indoor arrows overseas.
My tab (KSL Gold), and my fletchings are made by Arizona Archery Enterprises. They got back to me: “Yes, the KSL tabs are manufactured at our facility in Prescott Valley, AZ, USA.” 5300 miles, at least.
My rest and my finger slings are made by Spigarelli. They got back to me. “Good morning. Both of them are produced in Italy.” Spigarelli are based in Rome. Sadly, Rome is over 1,100 miles from London. Just thinking about the place makes me hungry.
Finally, the grip is not the original Hoyt grip. It is a lovely wood grip made by Svenning, who the previous owner thinks were a Swedish company. If so, they must have folded before the internet era, because I haven’t been able to find out anything about them at all.
So ‘my bow’ has already travelled at least 35,000 miles from at least seven different countries to sit in my hands, not including thousands more via distribution centres, warehouses, shops, and post offices. But where do we stop? One thing you quickly find out about recurve archery is the large number of near-mission-critical items required. Where was my bowstand (SF), my quiver (Easton), my bag (also Easton), or my string made? Or the less critical stuff: my chestguard, bracing height gauge, beeswax, tools… About the only bit of equipment that appears to be British-made is my bowstringer, by KG Archery of Nottinghamshire. (There are, of course, several British manufacturers making top-end recurve equipment, such as Border and Petron, along with many world-class traditional bowyers).
But that isn’t even the whole story. I’m not remotely the first to write about this kind of international manufacturing in the globalised age. The American journalist Thomas Friedman examined the supply chain for his Dell laptop a few years ago and found a huge network of interrelated companies, mostly in South-East Asia, a techno-business ecosystem. Even if something is designed and manufactured in one country, the actual materials and components, wherever they are assembled, may have come from all over the place – often another continent. The fibres, the screws, the grommets, the chemicals, the paint, or the packaging may have come thousands of miles before they even hit the factory. (For a more high-tech perspective on manufacturing in the globalised era, you might want to read about why iPhones apparently cannot be made in the USA.)
It’s great having a new, well-behaving bow. The Uukha limbs are smooth and quiet and the Hoyt riser is beautiful. But: all my other equipment remains the same. The arrows and the tab and the rest and the button are just as critical. I’ve changed only a couple of components of a set that has come all this way to create ‘my’ bow. I doubt I’m ever going to throw everything away and start again afresh, even if I carried on upgrading forever – and it’s received archery wisdom to only change one thing at a time, anyway. It’s a variant on Theseus’s Paradox – ‘The axe that I’ve had for years, which has only needed two new heads and three new handles.’
Actually, perhaps I should consider all the effort in a different way. I am immensely grateful for a post by Greg Ross over at the Futility Closet, a compendium of all sorts of wonderful things, who tells a story about Douglas Adams in Japan:
“On visiting the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto, Douglas Adams was impressed at how well the 14th-century structure had weathered the passage of time. His Japanese guide told him that it hadn’t weathered well at all; in fact it had burned to the ground twice in the 20th century.
“So this isn’t the original building?” Adams asked.
“But yes, of course it is.”
“But it’s been burned down?”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
“Many times.”
“And rebuilt.”
“Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
“With completely new materials.”
“But of course. It was burned down.”
“So how can it be the same building?”
“It is always the same building.”
“I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise,” Adams wrote. The essence of a building is its design, the intention of the builder. The materials may decay and be replaced, but these are only instantiations of a persistent idea. “I couldn’t feel entirely comfortable with this view, because it fought against my basic Western assumptions,” Adams wrote, “but I did see the point.”
Exactly. In this sliver of an era where modern archers don’t make (or directly commission) their own equipment, the essence of my bow is my intention to create it and use it. It is a persistent idea. The parts may change, but the idea of ‘my bow’, the thing personal to me, stays the same. Remember that the next time you realise you’ve left your tab on the kitchen table.
Following on from last week’s NYT article about the archery ‘explosion’ in the US – which appears to be replicated in many other countries – someone alerted me to what Louis Vuitton has been up to. For the last seven years LV has been the world’s most valuable luxury brand, and it appears that someone there has been noticing which way the wind is blowing.
From the pitch… “LV releases a pair of archery-themed accessories to complement their men’s Fall/Winter 2012 runway collection. The feather pendant decorating the brooch comes in two color combinations and resembles arrow fletches, imparting a seasonal outdoors feel to whichever garment they accompany. In addition to a silver arrow-shaped pin, the brooch features a Louis Vuitton logo bangle attached to the pendant. The brooch pins are now available for purchase at Louis Vuitton outlets.”
But that’s not all. At LV’s Boston store, amongst others, someone has been building arrow based window displays in order to sell, um, handbags.
Does it stop there? Hell no. Hermès has been sticking archery on the runway recently – as, naturally, the perfect accessories to accompany a decidedly Robin Hood-ish winter collection.
Not to mention a variety of Olympics themed / tagged daftness, flogging beauty products and accessories. Google Images is now full of models/actresses/whatever wanging bows, posing dramatically with compounds against moody skies, and, famously, shooting sighted recurves as if they were barebows…
As to what to make of all this, meh. Archery has been sexed-up this year – rather against its will – by a now familiar combination of films, TV and the Olympics coverage. The fashion world of course has no interest whatsoever in archery as a sport. If, say, fencing had been similarly treated, you’d be seeing sabre brooches and models badly wielding foils on the runway (actually fashion runways are a bit like fencing pistes… this could work…).
On one hand, the aesthetics of archery is a big thing for me. I think bows (particularly recurves) are beautiful things both in use and in their own right; and that’s one of the things I wanted to bring to this archery blog. I can understand why someone would want a piece of that. And if it brings more people into archery, or indeed any sport, all the better. Everyone has to find some route in. It’s not like people don’t quickly find out that ‘being Katniss’ is difficult. On the other hand, it trivialises and reduces an ancient tradition and a modern sport into something – anything – to flog handbags and monograms with.
Still, maybe I could pull off one of those brooches…
Another one I found in the archives: Simon Terry shooting at Lords a couple of weeks ago. The light got delightful as the afternoon drew on and the shadows got longer. The noise of the flag eyelets rattling gently in the wind still stays with me. Gently exotic.
I was pleased with my seats for the sessions, generally speaking – although the difference between the £90 tickets and the £30 tickets were relatively minimal. Really easy to see the archers, although you had to crane your neck a bit to the left to see the giant screen. I can still remember it. Actually, I’m still glowing with pride that I was there. What a year.
At 8.30 this morning I wake up in bloody Berlin. Long story. Then it’s walk to the station, train, plane, bus, train, tube, bus (to office to dump stuff), bus, tube, and another bus to find myself outside Lords shortly before the 3pm afternoon session with my eight year old nephew. Thanking the transport gods, we go in. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, and it’s probably the first time I’ve hung out with him, ever. If I’m going to finally do ‘uncle stuff’, it’s best I kick it off in style: the women’s team Olympic archery final. I know now he’s more interested in Star Wars, but one day, he’ll thank me.
We are up in stand 2 on the right of the shooting lanes, so we can see the right-handers front on. Good. Unfortunately the Team GB women got knocked out this morning by a rampant Russia. E wants to support someone, but he doesn’t know who, until the noise level around us cranks up, and the excitement builds. Korea are shooting. The immense shower that follows rattles no one (it’s the rainiest day of the shoot and leads to some of the more spectacular photographs). No one even flinches. You wonder if, given the standards in Korea, seven years ago the developing squad heard something like “Oh, the Olympics is in London? Rainy old London? Right, turn the hoses on…”. As Ki Bo Bae, Lee Sung-Jin and Choi Hyeongju demolish a miserable looking Denmark, E has picked his team. Luckily the two lads in front of us, who have taken a shine to him, have some spare flags and noisemakers.
The rhythms of the team event become gradually familiar as the afternoon winds on. The ‘third’ up first, usually looking the most nervous of the trio, the quick to the mark second, and the grimly determined first, usually the most senior member. The widest shoulders. The anchor. The skip. The one with the most difficult job. As the gold medal match between China and Korea comes up, no one seems to have taken to this role with more fervour than Yuting Fang:
Source: Paul Gilham/Getty Images Europe
a 22 year old of terrifying focus and will. The script is for Korea to win, as it has been for decades. But China come incredibly close. It is down to Ki Bo Bae, needing that 9. I remember watching her, and not the arrow, and then listening to the roar. Just another day at the office. Perfect.
You can still watch the whole thing here for a while.
