A ten-minute, award-winning short film from Italy about someone practising archery with darker motives in mind.
Warnings: not for kids, not really safe for work, and not exactly an advert for the sport. But I enjoyed it anyway… 🙂
(via Archery Scrolls)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150906/jsp/frontpage/story_41043.jsp
“I am worried over Deepika’s problem. Less than a year is left for the Olympics and Deepika has to come up with her best. Her selection for Rio will hinge a lot on her performance in the coming months,” said Jamshedpur-based Dharmendra Tiwary, who was the Indian team mentor at both Denmark and Poland competitions.
While Deepika, Majhi and Biruily have qualified for next year’s Rio Olympics team event, their participation hinges on Indian selectors’ appraisal of their performance in various tournaments in the lead-up to the world’s biggest sports extravaganza.
“Unlike Champia, who has qualified for Olympics in his individual capacity and will, therefore, compete in Rio, the women will need to maintain their performance in upcoming national and international competitions for getting selected in the Indian squad,” explained V.V.S.N. Rao, former technical director of Tata archery cradle.
“Hence, the upcoming events are very crucial for the women archers,” he said.
Tiwary explained that Deepika was a top-bracket archer who was a seasoned performer with a hunger to do well. “When she was new to archery, Deepika used to shoot well with a free mind. But that is not the situation now. She may be feeling bogged down by the pressure to perform. This happens when one becomes seasoned. Remember, Deepika is in archery for more than a decade now,” he explained.
I’ve written before about the endemic sexism in the Indian media about Deepika Kumari and unfortunately, it shows no sign of going away. But when her own coaches help to stick the knife in, it seems particularly awful.
I’m struggling to think of any other country or NGB that would undermine its own elite Olympic athletes by detailing their perceived faults in public, to the press. Unfortunately, it only seems to happen to female athletes, and Kumari in particular, despite her relatively strong season so far and anchoring a team that qualified for Rio.
Even worse is the incorrect assertion that Mangal Singh Champia qualified himself personally for Rio, when he only qualified a individual place for Indian men. I suppose the Indian archery association might have some internal code about what would happen in Copenhagen qualification, but if what he is saying is true, i.e. Champia gained a place that was somehow ‘his’ by right but the women had to earn their places in a 2016 selection shoot (like most other nations) then surely that would be deeply unethical, not to mention possibly illegal?
Even if he is just wrong, the choice of words is telling. It’s not so surprising in a country recently cited as the worst G20 country in which to be a woman, but a lot of attitudes in the world of Indian sport seem stuck firmly in the nineteenth century – and the country’s media still apparently do nothing to help.
Nice work (via Eat Sleep Archery).
A long-running saga in Mexican archery seems to have publicly erupted. It appears that elite Mexican archers have been in a dispute for some time with the Mexican federation, partly due to a lack of funds.
Aida Roman, Juan Rene Serrano, Mario Cardoso, and Linda Ochoa went to the recent Wroclaw World Cup unassisted and self-funded – with Ochoa raising eyebrows for apparently having to sell some of her bows to fund the recent European swing.
On their return from Poland, Alfredo Castillo (centre), who represents CONADE – the Mexican government agency for Olympic sport – met with some of the athletes and publicly stated he would support them against the archery federation. He tweeted that he had reiterated to them that the funds were there to support them, not “intermediaries” and that he would ask World Archery to cease recognising the Mexican archery federation because of the current mismanagement. The body language in the picture (above), however, seemed to hint of what was to come.
Barely a couple of days later, he backtracked, saying this was not part of their high performance plan, that funds would be better spent ‘selectively’ and on training rather than foreign trips – noting Aida Roman’s individual position of eight in Poland and apparently ignoring the mixed team gold she picked up with Juan-Rene – not to mention at least one nailed on qualification for the final in Mexico City. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/deportes/futbol/2015/08/22/conade-detecta-anomalias-en-atletas-al-momento-de-competir
There have been a couple of recent articles in the Mexican media about the lack of financial support for archers (a TV piece I posted recently confirms this – the title translates as ‘Champion without support’): http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/deportes/2015/aida-roman-campeona-sin-apoyo-1091525.html
Aida Roman then responded with a furious public broadside in PubliMetro in which she spoke out about Castillo’s reversal, saying she was treated by him as a “criminal”. On top of all this, it appears that either one or more of the senior Mexican archery coaches are contemplating quitting since the federation has not paid them in six months: http://www.publimetro.com.mx/publisport/acusan-a-alfredo-castillo-de-tratar-a-los-deportistas-como-delincuentes/mohA!H0eUGHEori94M/
Castillo then responded to the effect that the athletes may disagree with the governing bodies’ decisions, but those decisions are “supported scientifically by a group of experts” – whatever that means: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/deportes/mas-deportes/2015/08/29/castillo-evita-polemica-con-aida
Castillo appears not to be popular with the Mexican sports public – especially if this set of Facebook comments is anything to go by. This one looks like it might run and run, and unfortunately, Mexican archery is probably going to be the loser.
Thanks very much to Dario Maciel for extensive assistance. Do you have any more information? Get in touch.
So I was up in Wollaton Park in Nottingham on media duties for Jon Nott and Archery GB. I got to man the Twitter feed, develop my DSLR speed photo-processing skills (best I got was shutter click to Lightroom to internet in 70 seconds), grab quotes, photograph everyone for the post-podium media shots (‘smile… please‘), eat a lot of walnut cake, touch an owl and so much more.
The weather mostly held fine, not blazing, rained a bit on Sunday but not enough to spoil the parade. Nottingham turned out. There was some seriously decent matches, too. My favourite was watching Nichola “Marge” Simpson take gold on Sunday though. A 58-year-old lady taking the top national prize in any sport is pretty extraordinary, but she did it with plenty to spare.
So here’s some of my pictures. I even got to instruct other photographers (hi Dean!) on what to do, and they were kind enough to deliver me some great stuff to use. I didn’t have the fancy two-ton Nikkor lens I had in Poland, and I didn’t have the time I would have liked to skulk around from all angles, and I was banging out the shots for social media rather that, y’know, art, and the light wasn’t all that… but hey. You can’t win ’em all. I had a great time, and the shoot had a great crew and ran smooth as butter.
Scores here.
Many, many pics from the weekend by @bimblingalong here and here.
Thanks to Jon Nott and everybody else up there. Special thanks to Graham Potts for the lift(s).
Kieran Slater
Brad Denny
Bros w. Bows
Patrick Huston
Junior mixed team (sorry don’t know her name – mail in if you do).
Guy with the owl. GUY WITH THE OWL.
Patrick & Naomi
Wollaton Hall, creepy process
Beth Martel
Naomi Jones
Dani Brown & Andrea Gales
Nicky ‘Marge’ Simpson
Daisy Clark
Simon Froggatt
Dani Brown
A lovely piece. Just watch.
Short but elegant video from the KCultureChannel depicting the making of traditional bamboo arrows for use with gakgung. The bamboo used is actually referred to as ‘arrow bamboo‘, and the maker has to be careful to select wood of exactly the same age and knot spacing in order that the arrows will spine correctly.
The KCultureChannel also have brief videos on bowmaking and the Bucheon Bow Museum, amongst much else. Although, if you are interested in this kind of thing, you really must watch the 20 minute doc The Bow And Arrow Of Korea, made in the 1980s and narrated in cut-glass English. Apparently there’s not that many of these guys left still making bows.
So I went to the very last Wroclaw World Cup to work for the World Archery comms team; the third time I’ve done this gig after stints in Antalya and Shanghai – although it’s not my first time in Wroclaw.
It was hot. Seriously, if you’d turned up in Poland, of all places, for a lying-by-the-pool sun holiday you wouldn’t have been disappointed. 35ºC / 95ºF and sunny all day right up until Sunday which was mostly overcast and muggy. Sounds great: until you have to sit in a sweltering tent, with sweat running off you, with every laptop and server fan screaming, desperately trying to keep the infrastructure working, and everything getting covered in dust. All. Day. Long. Every afternoon we kept dreaming of the lovely air-conditioned hotel and its infinite supply of lovely cold Polish beer.
You can read what we wrote about it and find all the results here. It was a much quieter affair than previous World Cups and the World Championships in Copenhagen. Many nations were saving their budgets or their archers for a double bill of the Medellin leg and the Rio test event.
Several familiar archery nations were absent (Korea, Chinese Taipei, Great Britain, Australia), fielding alternate teams (China, Japan), missing many/all of their usual recurves (Denmark, the Netherlands) or even flying solo self-funded without coaches (Mexico, Canada). Many team line-ups saw at least one change from Copenhagen.
The USA were particularly prominent on both finals days, and took home a spectacular recurve haul on Sunday. At least a couple of the performances were really strong and would have tested the best Asian first teams. The individual finals on Sunday were probably the highlight, and you can watch them here.
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Previously I’ve extensively typed up what I got up to, but I’m not going to do that this time. I took a lot of photographs, and for the first time had a decent set of lenses which (mostly) worked pretty well, although I could have done with about another 100mm of focal length. I’ve been working on keeping things a little simpler; trying to improve the workflow and the image detail. It started slowly, but 1500 shots later I got a few I was pretty pleased with.
Naturally, Dean was there doing his usual superb work. I didn’t try to directly duplicate what he does, and tried to look for other things and other angles – although I couldn’t resist a ‘sunglasses-target-reflection’ or two. But I couldn’t resist borrowing (OK, stealing) a few of his ideas. Standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. OK, enjoy.
Thanks, as usual, to Chris Wells, Dean Alberga and the rest of the WA team.
You can right click to open photos in a new window / tab. All photographs are © 2015 The Infinite Curve. You can re-use them non-commercially, it would be nice to let me know if you do. Cheers!
LaNola Pritchard
Steve ‘Big Cat’ Anderson, Juan Rodriguez.
“I will cut you.”
(not really. Also, both stand-up guys to interview.)
Ane Marcelle dos Santos
Lexi Keller.
Toja Cerne
I caught this picture just after what was clearly a bad shot when she turned towards the camera. The next frame is more of a scowl. I’m basically an asshole.
Recurve – men’s eliminations
Collin Klimitchek (left), Anton Prilepov (right)
Mahji Laxmirani (left), Rimil Buriuly
Maja Marcen
Still not sure what to do with expanses of scrubby grass. I love the lines and the rare chance to get a completely clean shot of an archer with anyone else or a lot of scopes getting in the way. But a lot of grass looks odd in a colour shot. Monochrome seemed the way to go.
Anton Prilepov, Alena Kuzniatsova
Nancy El Gibily
Sophie Planeix.
Sophie Planeix had a slightly fussy, almost ‘prim’ style which took her centre of gravity forward. Still, can’t argue with a finals place.
Deepika Kumari
Bernado Oliveira
The Brazilian team had been on the road over five weeks. There were some great perfomances, but you could sort of sense they were all ready to go home.
Lisa Unruh, Marina Canetta Gobbi
Collin Klimitchek.
Ayano Kato.
Wroclaw 2015 finals field panorama
Steve ‘Big Cat’ Anderson.
Alejandra Usquiano (left), Natalia Avdeeva (right)
Usquiano was way off her previous form in the final, and looked upset and uncomfortable throughout. I almost had an amazing shot of her bowing her head with Avdeeva punching the air. Is it remotely in focus? Is it bollocks. The ones that get away. (Chris was very pleased with this one.)
Stephan “The King Of Denmark” Hansen
Lexi Keller
The fountains behind only properly erupted once an hour. Never quite managed to get the perfect shot of them and someone on the line. Tried, though.
Brady Ellison.
Finally, after a few years of trying, I manage to get an image of Brady Ellison that gets close to capturing the intensity of the performance. He’d not seemed entirely comfortable in the anchor role all week, and a couple of team chances went begging. It looked at times like Collin was the one holding the team together. You could sense the pressure – probably self-inflicted.
But when he needed to deliver it, on the last arrow, it was there. He found it. It was great to be that close when he did.
Aida Roman.
Marc Rudow.
A left hander on the German team I’d not seen before. I enjoyed his confident and elegant draw.
Ayano Kato.
Delivered the fightback of the week against Mackenzie Brown in the final. She’d been nailing the shootoffs all Thursday long, not out here though.
Elena Richter.
Richter has a habit of closing her eyes, being very still and going ‘into the tank’ between head-to-head shots. It was great to watch. And it worked.
Zach Garrett
Great archer, great to watch, really nice guy in person. As good as it gets.
Deepika Kumari
Another slighting disappointing finals day performance, another berating in the Indian media.
Tanya Giaccheri
HALA STULECIA fountains, Wroclaw
Bye bye Wroclaw. Hope to see you for the World Games in 2017!
So I went to Copenhagen. I wasn’t going to miss that. It’s a beautiful city.
The camera worked. World Archery were kind enough to let me in with the real photographers. I got some shots I really liked, and some I thought would have been great if only I had four-grand’s worth of full-frame camera and glass, and knew just a little bit more about what I was doing. Still, onwards and upwards. I was in the right place for this sequence, anyway. I also got to see the Holmegaard bow, the oldest extant bow in existence, about which more will follow at a later date.
I was originally intending to make a podcast based around the world championships, but after a lengthy parade of technical disasters, I’ve decided not to. The Zoom H2n recorder I bought sounded good and worked pretty well until it didn’t, which was at every crucial opportunity: refusing to save files, batteries draining off despite a claimed 20hr battery life, and featuring terrible handling noise for a hand-held object. (I’m sending it back). A lot of interviews I recorded on the field were marred by too-loud background music, a planned meeting at the museum had to be abandoned after the curator was unavailable, athletes I was hoping to get some words out of stormed off in a fury… on it went. Some of it was my fault, some of it was bad luck, some of it was just dumb and frustrating. I also could only be in Copenhagen for the last four days of the worlds, and I realised a bit too late that to do a really proper job I would need to be there the whole week.
I have always tried to produce (or select) the absolute best content that I can for this blog, and after getting home and reviewing all the audio from the weekend I decided it just wasn’t good enough to do something with. This was despite the American archer Ariel Gibilaro going the absolute extra mile and making a handful of on-the-road recordings for me in the weeks leading up to the championships. She took the time, and I’m annoyed that I can’t follow through with it for her. I will have another try at this next year once I’ve got some more practice with live audio in, and hopefully I can incorporate some of the material that did work into something else.
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Back to the sport: the finals weekend stayed dry and bright after some seriously apocalyptic weather earlier in the week, and recurve Sunday brought an almost unparalleled display of Korean dominance. During the week the great white sharks had had to fight some serious battles, but on the big day no-one seemed to be able to bring a game to them, and Sunday did lack a bit of drama compared to the much-harder-to-call compound finals on Saturday. Kim Woojin joined the elite list of double world champions, and didn’t seem all that bothered. But no-one begrudged Ki Bo Bae fighting off the visible stress and nerves to complete what must be the archery equivalent of a career grand slam. She didn’t give a perfect performance, but she gave a fighting one, and it was enough. Afterwards, she said she was just about managing not to cry. That changed when she got to the podium.
Watch the finals here: team and individual. All the WA news roundups here. There’s some more photos on the Facebook page.
KOR women on the way to bronze against Japan.
There was an ironic moment after the ladies team matches, when the Korean ladies and their coaches sat down in a row of empty seats in the athletes section of the crowd and got insistently moved on by a officious volunteer because “these seats are reserved for VIPs”. :-/
USA men, who lost to a clinical Chinese Taipei.
Collin Klimitchek
Zach Garrett
An incredibly casual KOR men’s team, who didn’t seem all that bothered about becoming world champions.
Kim Woojin in quizzical mood (from earlier in the week). I have about six shots of him pulling this same expression.
Majhi Sawaiyan
After the team events, I took some photographs from the cloisters at the warm-up range behind Christiansborg Palace shortly before the individual finals. This turned out to be a good idea: I could get shots from a great angle and slightly above the shooting line, the afternoon light was starting to look good, and it was all business. No one spoke, just the sound of arrows being launched. You could sense the tension in the faces, the sense of importance, the fear.
Shih-Chia Lin
Majhi Sawaiyan
Ki Bo Bae
Ki Bo Bae
Ki Bo Bae
Ki Bo Bae… finally.
Venezuelan fans giving it some for their man Elias Malave.
Bye bye, Copenhagen. You were great.
See the rest of my pictures from Copenhagen 2015 here and here.
Thanks to Chris Wells, and a ridiculously long list of charming people I finally got to meet. Thank you!
Kin Yun Hee
Adam Ravenscroft
Sara Lopez
Stephan Hansen
