Italian field archery coach Giorgio Botto explains how he likes to approach the whole world of archery on his Facebook page. What a guy. Enjoy:
“Some days ago I was asked to explain how I manage to do EVERYTHING in Archery.
“Target archery is both the main course and the meat. Nothing is better and more complete. It may be like tajarin, pici, tortellini or orecchiette.
And meat? Shall we talk about meat? It can be stewed, grilled or broiled. Let’s dig in! ( the Italian idiomatic expression means “I wish my stomach gets as big as a house”).
We could greatly live eating just pasta and meat! But… I like ice-cream too!
Ice-cream is like field archery. It is a healthy food, it contains eggs, milk, fruit and CHOCOLATE! How delicious! One may eat only ice-creams. However pasta and meat are needed as well.
Then, if people from the target archery world deny the existence of ice-cream or even say ice-cream is bad for your health, it’s their own business! Such sad opinions. Personally, in the summer I eat a ton of ice-cream…
And then? Health fanatics insist on saying we should drink only natural water, from springs at least a thousand meters above sea level. Others claim their preference on what’s good and what’s wrong according to the latest craze in the US (“Only Coke for me!”).
Some others are used to altering their emotional status, swallowing hundreds and hundreds of liters of RedBull and other junk energy drinks.
I like red wine instead. Red wine is like 3D archery.
Nice, fresh, makes you happy and offers intense moments to take your mind off things. One may not live only drinking red wine. Those who do so soon begin to talk gibberish and may not live long. However, I don’t find anything better in life than sharing half a bottle of red wine with some friends.
So I know, it is obvious, but my archery life is a full menu: a big plate of pasta, fresh-cooked meat, some ice-cream and red wine. I may not live a hundred years, but as long as it lasts… it was worth living it!”
(this translation has been handed down to me… other interpretations are welcome!)
Alcuni giorni fa mi han chiesto come, nell’arco, riuscissi a fare “tutto”.
Forse, complice l’ora, ma mi venne spontanea la seguente metafora:
Il targa è il primo e la carne. Non c’è niente di meglio e più completo. Che poi siano tajarin, pici, tortellini o orecchiette. La pasta è tutta buona.
E la carne ? vogliamo discutere sulla carne? Brasato, stinco, fiorentine ….. Stomaco mio fatti capanna ! Si vive di pasta e carne, e …. alla grande.
Però ….. a me piace anche il gelato !
Il gelato è il campagna. Il gelato è alimento sano, ci sono le uova, il latte la frutta e il CIOCCOLATO !!!!
BONO !!!
Si potrebbe vivere di solo gelato, ma ….. la pasta è la carne ci vogliono.
Poi, che il mondo targa neghi l’esistenza del gelato o addirittura dica che fa male, affari loro. Opinioni tristi.
Io d’estate di gelato ne mangio a volontà.
E poi ??? I salutisti, insistono con il dire che si deve solo bere acqua naturale di fonte sopra i 1000 m s.l.m. . Altri, coloro che decidono cosa sia giusto o sbagliato in funzione di cosa è moda negli States dichiarano: “ Only Coke for me!”. Alcuni poi, son soliti alterare il normale stato emotivo ingollando ettolitri di redbull o robacce similari.
A me piace il vino rosso.
Il vino rosso è il 3D.
Bello, fresco, mette allegria e regala intensi momenti di svago.
Non si vive di solo vino rosso, chi lo fa dopo poco straparla e non vive a lungo. Ma io una mezza bottiglia di rosso, in compagnia, la trovo quanto di meglio possa offrire la vita.
Quindi, lo so, si vede, ma … una bella cofana di pasta, carne fatta per il giusto, gelato e vino rosso è la vita mia
….. so che non camperò 100 anni ma finchè dura….. valeva la pena vivere!
(Thanks to Chris Wells, Matteo Pisani and Rebecca Rabozzi)
Radio piece on Woman’s Hour this morning on BBC Radio 4 (the national talk station) about women taking up archery; they interview Maggie Woolf and several novice archers from Aquarius Archers in London. Some cool stuff – although they get docked points for the ‘bullseye’ reference and the hey-nonny-nonny music.
In my club (also in London) we sometimes refer to Aquarius as “across the way” – although it’s lucky Radio 4 didn’t ask any of our ladies whether they “fantasise that you are Jennifer Lawrence in the Hunger Games running around in the woods”, because they might have got a slightly different answer. 😉 The piece also features Dani Brown talking about how and why she shoots. Compared to the average portrayal of archery for non-specialists in the media these days, it’s pretty damn good.
So I took up an offer from World Archery to come and work on their communications team for the Antalya leg of the World Cup circuit. I wrote up stories: writing, helping to write, assisting or otherwise having a hand in most of the news stories you can see on the front page of worldarchery.org during the events. I grabbed quotes, facts, and the odd picture. I wrote some of the features and previews. I got to work with an amazing and amazingly professional team – Chris Wells, head of communications; Didier Mieville, head of marketing; Matteo Pisani, head of making everything actually work, and Dean Alberga, capo di tutti capi of archery photography, amongst many others. I had a incredible time, although it was pretty full-on. Immersive archery media.
It’s not my first World Cup – I went to Wroclaw last year for a couple of days, which you can read about here and here – but it was my first trip on the inside. This isn’t going to be a full narrative account, and I can’t spill all the beans. This will be more like a handful of memories. (There are plenty more of Dean’s spectacular pics on the smugmug page, too)
Choi Bomin during official practice.
In 1990, after losing a penalty shootout at the (football) World Cup, Gary Lineker said “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.” In international archery events, it sometimes seems like you need a similar quote: “500 people fling arrows at targets for five days, and at the end, the Koreans always win.” Except they didn’t. But things changed.
Antalya nestles snugly at one end of the Turkish Riviera on the Mediterranean, protected by the Toros mountains. A port town for over 2000 years, it has expanded wildly since the 1970s to be one of the largest tourist destinations in Europe. Three hundred sunny days a year, apparently, and we are going to get five of them. After an amazing preamble trip to Istanbul with Ms. Infinite Curve, I am treated not just a sea view, but a mountain view too at the smart Rixos Downtown, sat midway between the qualifications field and the beach where the finals are held. Things are looking good. I have a uniform to wear and have been provided with a variety of World Archery blue shirts, khaki shorts and trainers, courtesy of Fila, one of the main sponsors.
Reo Wilde: officially inspected.
By the time I get over to the practice session, the sun is starting to drop. On the qualifications field, we have an air-conditioned Portakabin where we can generate data, stories and dreams and distribute them to the outside world, via a satellite internet connection and wi-fi that will end up creaking under the strain of hundreds of tablets and phones all over the field hitting refresh twenty times a minute. Matteo and others have developed an incredible system for generating real-time data for archery tournaments, and the demand for it is insatiable. Data, scores, news and pictures. We must provide.
WEDNESDAY
When Korea warm-up, so do their coaches.
The main archery field, owned and managed by the Turkish Archery Federation, is squashed between two giant building sites and a housing estate on prime land near the beach – I get the feeling it won’t be around in a few years, in a city that is seeing rapacious development. Today is qualification day, also known as the ranking round. We are on the field early, and get to watch the recurve teams warm up. Running on the spot, flailing arms, you name it. Although everyone is watching Korea, anyway.
Everyone is always watching Korea. When the KAA decide not to send a recurve team to a World Cup event, the competition feels incomplete. The biomechanical approach to recurve shooting has long been exported along with dozens of elite coaches to all parts of the globe – but now the cultural and style elements, like the distinctive sunhats and the team warm ups, are starting to spread up and down the line, too. Everybody wants to grab a little piece of the magic. The Danish ladies team, with current Korean resident Maja Jager, have developed their own warm-up – a touchier, feelier version of the Korean routine:
At the end of the recurve session, I get quotes from man-of-the-moment Florian Kahllund, the young German archer, and for the first time encounter the perennial problem of sports interviewers: trying to eke something interesting out of someone who isn’t keen on saying very much. He has indeed said everything that needs to be said on qualification day by placing fifth out of 127 men, ahead of the reigning Olympic gold medallist and the reigning world champion. “I know I can shoot these scores in practice, but I’ve become stronger mentally over the past few months.” Can you tell us how, Florian? “Not really.” OK.
I speak to Dasomi Jung of Korea. Of the four women in their recurve squad, she has finished seventh, with her teammates taking places one, two and three. The Korean translator, the immensely helpful Mr. Choi, calls her over, and she gives me an unmistakeable oh-alright-for-fuck’s-sake look as she answers my questions with a bored tone – but she does gives some interesting information about why the Koreans went to Medellin, and why they went there a week early:
“It was the first time we had competed in South America. There is a huge time difference between Medellin and Korea and we needed some days to adjust to the jet lag. Since the Olympics will be held in South America in 2016 it was a good opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the environment. We’ve competed many, many times in Antalya already – so we don’t worry too much about (getting here early for) the competition here.” Familiarising yourselves for the Olympics two years early?Really? “Yes.”
The mixed team eliminations follow. I grab quotes from Peter Elzinga and Erika Jones, both of whom are well-familiar with the media, and the awesomely cocksure Jayanta Talukdar who has clipped the Korean pair to make the gold medal match. I’m starting to notice who would be a good interviewee and who wouldn’t. It’s going to make life a lot easier.
THURSDAY
Lee Seungyun.
Individual eliminations day. The archers are ferried from the hotels to the field in a fleet of coaches and minibuses. It’s actually only a couple of hundred yards from the hotel, but getting there on foot requires crossing Antalya’s main motorway with eight lanes of screaming traffic. I try this once, a terrifying real-life game of Frogger, and swear never again. The bus schedule is rather elastic and the Korean team have hired their own minibus for the week. This morning me and Chris manage to get a lift in it as it is ferrying Lee Seungyun, the 19 year old world champion. Yeaaaah, we special now. The badges on his chestguard apparently say ‘Lee Seungyun’, ‘No matter what’ and ‘Win it’. (thank you Vanessa Lee).
Yasemin Ecem Anagoz, in her quarter-final match.
The individual eliminations, as archers go head to head according to their seeding in the ranking round, are brutal. You can smell the fear. The wind has picked up and the djinns are blowing around, ready to destroy months and lifetimes of work. Everyone ducks deep inside themselves, trying to banish the lurking doubts and allow their unconscious to do the work. Everyone here has done what needs to be done – put arrows into the ten ring at 70 or 50 metres – thousands of times, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times. But can they do it on cue, in competition, with the capricious Mediterranean winds and the fears gurgling in the stomach? Can you do it now? Right now? Many big names take early baths, and I have to tread delicately amongst the stars.
“It was the wind.” I hear this a dozen times today, as I gently try to interview the fallen. Unlike most other precision sports, outdoor archery has a random variable, a roll of the dice. The wind is both a meddling god and a useful boogyman. Today, I actually believe everyone who says “it was the wind”, but later I wonder how many matches were really lost in the lift, in a hotel room, in baggage claim, in the moments of doubt that can strike anywhere.
Aida Roman is knocked out by Tatiana Segina in a shoot-off, where she held and held and held in a manner reminiscent of *that* shoot-off in London. Can I ask you a couple of questions, Aida? She barely whispers: “Yes.” The steel confidence displayed indoors at Telford and Nimes earlier this year was a million miles away. She is polite enough to give me “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose” platitudes, looking like a ghost. I feel awful. Much was expected of the Mexican ladies’ team outdoors this year, but so far they haven’t shone as brightly as expected. It’s the gulf between expectation and reality that really stings.
Best interview of the day went to Oh Jin-Hyek. I’m excited. The Olympic champion. The World Cup Final champion. The ‘Soft Drink Pig‘. The unconventional shooting genius has had a bad day at the office, beaten by Takaharu Furukawa in a rematch of the men’s individual final from London 2012. He stalks off the line, rattled, barking at somebody. A short while later I find Mr. Choi, and ask to speak to ‘Mr. Oh’. He looks at me slightly alarmed and says: “Are you sure?” Excellent. This is going to be a doozy.
We head for the Korean camp: as the sun is setting, he lumbers over looking like he wants to do pretty much anything else than answer my questions. I open with a fairly standard: Can you tell me how the last match went? Mr. Choi translates. And Oh starts talking… and talking… and talking, avoiding my eyes. Mr Choi keeps trying to stop him, but on and on he goes, and I suddenly realise he is really talking to Mr. Choi. He is justifying things to him, not me. He rattles on for at least ninety seconds, and finally stares off into the distance, grumpy.
Mr. Choi pauses briefly, and says. “He was mostly happy.”
I try not to crease up laughing, and eventually manage to tease something out about rather un-Korean ‘equipment problems’ (to cut a long subsequent story short, he was unhappy with his arrows). How are you going to clear your mind for the team eliminations tomorrow? He finally looks at me, and I see a flash of the pugnacious ego inside. “It will not be a problem. It was just the equipment.” I can deliver the goods anytime, sunshine. You can read what we wrote about it here.
In the compound eliminations, Choi Yong Hee of Korea makes it to the gold medal match – a first for the country, and a warning shot across the bows. In Dean’s picture (above), he lifts his bow to the setting sun like some kind of bizarre, Wicker Man-type ritual is about to happen. The destroyer.
FRIDAY
Team eliminations day. Compounds and recurves on the same field at the same time. Previously the field was separated by bowtype, now they are separated by sex. The men go first, and I flip between watching the two USA teams.
The recurves didn’t have a great ranking round, and their seeding meant they faced the tough Dutch squad in the first round. They lose 6-0, with Brady Ellison slamming his bow down at one point in frustration. Both USA compound teams, by contrast, breeze through the brackets into the gold medal matches. For most archers, the team eliminations is their last throw of the dice – after this, there is nothing to do for three days until the flight home but sunbathe and reflect on what might have been. There’s a kind of poignancy as people pack up their bows. A lot of wistful stares.
A word about coaches. They come in all shapes and sizes, all manners, all styles – the generals in the field, the technical managers, the in loco parentis. But in competitions like this there’s always a strange point where they are left behind, when the horn sounds and all the archers walk off to collect their arrows and score, and the coaches are left standing around an empty half of the field. The powerful suddenly become powerless, neutered, functionless. A bit lonely. Until the athletes come back and they suddenly spring to life. The eternal cycle.
(Except the Korean coaches. They sit down and get back up again).
It’s noticeable how many of the coaches in the top teams are deeply protective of their charges, and how hands-on many of them are. I suspect ‘hands-on’ is exactly what is required, thousands of miles from home and loved ones.
Today I got to meet the Japanese recurve team, who have managed to make four medal matches, and are the most successful recurve nation behind Korea. They are friendly and helpful, and I type up a feature piece about them as the field empties (there is another piece on the Easton website). In Japan there is a high school archery program, separate from the elite level coaching, which funnels talent into the system. Some high schools are publicly known for the quality of their archery coaching, and Hiroshi Yamamoto, an Olympic medallist in 1984, remains a household name, which has helped keep Olympic archery higher in the public consciousness than in other countries.
After the close of play here, the focus moves to the finals arena on Antalya beach. We all troop down to help set up and set the stage for tomorrow. I go to bed at 10pm completely shattered. We are all putting in 12 hour days or more, although it never really stops. You are constantly in the bubble. You are along for the ride.
SATURDAY
Compound finals day. The individuals preview piece is here, and the results pieces are here, here, here and here. The World Archery team suddenly doubles in size with TV crews, commentators, technicians and athlete herders along with everyone else. The finals are on a tight clock, two sessions a day. Me and Chris are doing the same things, only faster. I am the new guy, everyone else has been here before. There is a deep sense of professionalism.
The women’s compound final features some unfamiliar names. The Russian Natalia Avdeeda has been on the women’s circuit since 2009. She was up against a sixteen year-old girl from Iraq called Fatimah Almashhadani. That’s her in the above picture with the head of the Iraqi Archery Federation – who also happens to be her father.
Fatimah has been shooting compound for barely two years, but she left a trail of devastation on the Friday as she dispatched multiple World Cup champion Jamie Van Natta, 15-arrow world record holder Sara Lopez and reigning World Cup Final champion Alejandra Usquiano in individual qualification. It’s a bit like the trail Boris Becker blazed through Wimbledon in 1985, except it wasn’t a wunderkind prodigy from a rich nation with a strong sporting history, it was a shy girl in a headscarf from a country presently tearing itself apart.
Her shooting is a joy to watch, incredibly relaxed. Unlike a lot of grizzled pros, you can tell just how much she still really, really enjoys the physical act of shooting an arrow. With strong support from the local Turks in the audience and a vocal home contingent, Fatimah leads the match up until the very last end when the scores were tied, but unfortunately she sent down an eight and two nines, and the experienced Avdeeva took the match. (You can watch it here.) She looks horribly downcast at the loss, but from the reaction of the Iraq team, you would imagine she had won the gold. As for me, I find myself willing her to win for the whole match, because that would make a better story. Four days of this and I seem to have crossed some sort of journalistic threshold.
She speaks some English, and her father translates the rest: “I wasn’t nervous at all last night, but when I got to the final competition my heart started going faster. It was difficult to control my body. I was having to aim off and I found it hard. I was shooting fast, but I like shooting fast, because I am more focused. I had a dream last night, I got to the competition and we were shooting with the USA.”
Her sister Rand is in the national recurve team, and got a wildcard to London 2012 where she shot against Ki Bo Bae. “I was in the Iraqi recurve team, but decided to take up compound as a new challenge. I love shooting compound. My first coach was my mother. She taught me recurve. My current coach is Majid Ahmadi who was on the Iranian national team.” Mr. Ahmadi, a former World Cup gold medallist, shakes my hand about fifteen times today. He’s great.
“I have to thank coach Ahmadi for everything, really. He has been selfless for me and the national team. Iraq is a dangerous country, and he has fought for Iraqi archery like a citizen.”
I look down at her arrows. Two of them in the quiver have the nocks broken off… just like mine. It turns out that most Olympic sports programmes in Iraq are still in disarray – or worse. Her father says: “(In 2006) the president of the Iraqi Olympic Association, the secretary general, president of the handball association, volleyball federation and many members of the IOA, were herded and gunned down together.” The training conditions are challenging, too: “There are very few archers in Iraq – perhaps only 150. We don’t have any outdoor fields for archery at all. We have to find quiet areas, there is just one area in the north of the country where we can do an outdoor training camp. No shade, no grass. I sometimes practise in the back garden in Baghdad but that is only ten meters.”
She goes off to more photos and more acclaim from the ‘home nations’. But the expression on her face looks pained. She looks like she wants nothing more than to get back out there and have another go. There’s a shy 16 year old there, with the will of a total badass. She’s my new hero.
In the men’s individual competition, Choi Yong Hee of Korea takes an individual gold. He shoots confidently, swaggeringly. It’s effortless. The win is also a loud warning shot fired around the archery world, and the warning is this: Korea intend to dominate compound archery exactly as they dominate recurve archery. The famous strength in depth of the KAA machine, with a huge base of second-tier recurve archers who already have a strong mental game and who could be persuaded to switch to compound, seems set to take over. The great white sharks are coming. They’re already here.
Podium pic (by Chris Wells)
Both USA compound teams finish with silver medals, in what has long been the their strongest event and an expected gold. Two of the men’s team manage to muster a smile on the podium, but by their own high standards, this shoot has basically been a disaster for the USA.
The working day finishes a little earlier, although with finishing our write-ups it lasts a bit longer. When you are having a conversation with a Belgian, a Nederlander, an Italian and another Brit about the minutiae of archery technical scoring in a gaudy hotel bar with ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ tinkling in the background, time flows in mysterious ways.
SUNDAY
I get up at 6.30 and go for a swim in the Rixos’s completely empty pool. The hotel has been sparklingly good for five days. The world outside the bubble seems hazy, unreal. It’s been good to focus on this one thing and almost nothing else – has made me realised how distracted, how scatty I can get with the usual day to day nonsense. I haven’t shot for a few weeks, but it feels like I have. Like my brain is in gear. It’s my last day here.
(The great white sharks. Photo: Dean Alberga)
It’s almost all Asian nations contesting the recurve finals today, with only Florian Kahllund of Germany representing Europe, and not a soul from the Americas. The women’s team events are a straight re-run of London 2012, featuring many of the same names, with Japan facing Russia for the bronze and Korea versus China for the gold – although the Olympic results end up being reversed. I try and get some quotes out of the Chinese team afterwards; their translator is unhelpful and the women look at me like I’m from Mars. We finish the piece and move on to the men’s team, where the Korean men do what they do so well: winning, and easily. There is a slight grit to the performance after the women’s team only took silver. They are making sure.
In contrast to the Chinese, the Koreans are gradually opening up to the media. For years, you could get little more out of them except “I shot well, it was good, I was proud to shoot for my country.” (In fact, Chris instructs me to strike the phrase “I was happy” from all quotes generated from winners. “Everyone is always happy!’) So it is surprising to hear Oh Jin-Hyek talking about ‘weaknesses’ in the team – even if the ‘weaknesses’ he is talking about may not be the same weaknesses everyone else talks about.
With my new blue uniform I am actually getting the tiniest of respectful nods from the Koreans. The smallest of head nods, not quite a bow, but some kind of acknowledgement – and better than the glares I was getting last year. But I notice how the Korean coaches treat Juan-Carlos Helgado, the senior events director – he gets a nod approximately two inches deeper. They know my place in this lineup.
Having spent a few days watching the Koreans, I am increasingly convinced that they are deliberately maintaining a brand, and playing up to the image they have created of slick professionalism and machine-like dominance, because this serves a purpose: sowing fear amongst other squads, and maintaining the air of unbeatability.
Korea – supporting
But they aren’t a machine. They are beatable. They cheer, cry, lark about, chat and decorate themselves, everywhere but the shooting line. They laugh – a lot. They love the attention. But the great white sharks make sure to maintain their reputation, even if they don’t always catch every fish. I’m sorry to leave the bubble, and the glorious sunlight, and all that staggering talent. It’s been like nothing else on earth.
I’m in Istanbul. The gateway between Europe and Asia, capital of four empires, the gleaming jewel straddling the Bosphorus. It’s an incredible place to visit, full of wonders, echoing with the adhan, smelling of the sea.
Founded as Byzantium by the Greeks in 660BC, it became a Christian city under Roman rule as Constantinople in 600AD, and began its best known era as the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453 before the founding of modern Turkey in the 1930s, when the city was renamed Istanbul. The tumultuous history has led to extraordinary places such as the Hagia Sophia; the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years, then a mosque for the next five hundred (it’s now a museum featuring both religions). The Sultans famously liked the finer things in life and the Topkapi Palace museum contains some gilded archery treasures. I’ve heard of ‘quiver bling’, but this is ridiculous:
Composite bow, Topkapi Palace.
Quiver, Topkapi Palace
Siper (used for overdrawing composite bows), Topkapi Palace
Another room in the palace contains some of the more sacred relics of Islam; parts of Prophet Mohammed’s beard, and various items handed down as his weaponry amongst much else. The ‘Bow Of The Prophet’ is made of bamboo and dates from around 615AD, its simplicity offset by a highly decorative ‘scabbard’ commissioned by a much later Sultan:
Archery is written firmly into Istanbul’s history. The Ottoman conqueror of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmet II, immediately ordered the purchase of land to to train archers in a region of the city now known as Okmeydanı – literally, “arrow field.” His son Beyazid apparently constructed a lodge toward the end of the 15th century to train the elite archers of the day. This lodge apparently opened on May 6th each year for six consecutive months of archery training, and was maintained by the Sultans of the day – a minaret was added by Ebubekir Ağa in 1771, and a major repair was undertaken in 1819 by Mahmud II. The training was as much mystical as physical: there is more detail from the fantastic Turkish Culture site:
“Okmeidan and tekke [lodges] were accepted to be holy places and were highly respected. The Islamic personal cleaning ritual called “abdest” which is a must prior to daily praying was performed before entering the Okmeidan as if this place was a temple… Although there was obvious discrimination among the social layers of Ottoman Empire, in Okmeidan all archers were accepted to be equitant like in any temple.
Another example for the mystic aspects of the education and application was the “Ya Hakk!” shouting of flight shooters which means “Hey God!”. This seems to be similar to the so-called “kiai” in Japanese martial arts and it makes sense to believe that they both have the same purpose.
The interesting symbolism in bow morphology is another point in the archery-related mysticism. The upper limb was symbolizing the “good” or “holy” while the lower limb stands for “evil”. The grip was accepted to bind these two polar tendencies of the universe and of the man himself. The middle of the grip where a small piece of ivory or bone plate (chelik) is inserted was the symbol of the so-called “vahdet-i vücûd”, a Sufi term meaning the common identity of all universe and creatures; a projection of God.
An earthquake did for the lodge in 1896, and after the founding of modern Turkey from the 1950s the lodge and the surrounding area became filled with shanties and illegally-built housing projects. In 2005, there was a major historical, political and architectural effort to return the lodge to its former glories. The work was completed in 2012, and officially re-opened by the Prime Minister himself in 2013. What they have built would make any national body or club drool:
From the architect of the project, Sinan Gemin: “Today’s Okmeydanı Okçular Tekkeri (‘Archery Lodge’) consists of five different sections spread over an area of approximately 5,000m2: the Sultan’s summer palace, a small mosque, a conference hall, a museum, and a library. The conference hall has a capacity for 200 people, the library contains collections focused on the history of archery, and the museum will exhibit arrows and arches (sic) brought from the Topkapi Palace Museum. Underneath the arrow shooting range there is an underground parking area for 300 cars, a cafeteria and changing and fitness rooms. The facility also boasts of an indoor archery range ready to be used for training in winter months.”
The facility has its own mosque and extensive wings.
There is a fully floodlit, 90m field and seating for 375 (by my count). There was even a very small archery shop (which was open).
Above: this being a ‘hard-court’, the mobile bosses are held in place by bags of ballast.
Maybe it was just the fact that it was Monday afternoon, but there was a slightly empty feel about the project when I visited: the library didn’t seem to have much about archery, the museum was closed, as was the cafeteria, and the field was completely deserted. The only busy part of the lodge was the mosque over lunchtime prayers, which seemed to be very popular with the locals.
There was an archery competition held a couple of days previously, which featured the Prime Minister’s son – a founder and board member of the project – shooting some arrows to kick things off. According to the official website, that is the only tournament scheduled. It would be a terrible shame if such an incredible facility in the fifth-most populous city on earth were to go to waste.
I wander the surrounding streets with a jerry-rigged treasure map, in search of target stones. Flight archery was immensely popular in the glory days of the Ottomans, and the Turkish composite bow was perfectly optimised for shooting shorter, lighter arrows immense distances. The great and the good would mark a new record with a ‘target’ or ‘medal’ stone on the shooting grounds of the day (there are sometimes corresponding ‘foot stones’ marking the launch point too), with script in Arabic showing the archer and the distance. There were once hundreds of these stones all over Istanbul, but the city’s rapid expansion in the 20th century has seen many of them re-used, stolen or bulldozed to make way for housing, despite their royal heritage – many were commissioned by some of the more famous Sultans of the empire.
Many stones, once proudly erect in rolling fields, now stand alone in unremarkable suburban surroundings. Amongst the drab, maze-like backstreets of Okmeydanı, I found a few:
This one above was apparently commissioned by Sultan Mahmud II himself.
This one is almost invisible, forced up against a concrete wall, its markings facing the ‘wrong’ way.
It’s a beautiful day, and in the northern quarter of the modern Kulaksiz cemetery I find another one, incongruous amongst the ordered graves:
I befriend a helpful gravedigger – he speaks no English, and I almost no Turkish, but the international language of drawing a bow seems to work – and he leads me to a couple more, and the Ottoman-style gravestone of who I think he is telling me is a famous archer:
A mile or two northeast in upmarket Nişantaşı (pronounced ni-shan-ti-shay – meaning “Target Stone”) a handful of markers still remain – on the intersection of Valikonagi & Tesvikiye streets:
outside Harbiye police station:
and a couple in what is now the car park of a mosque:
The stones came in various designs depending on the era: some looked like barley sugars twisted together. They are macho and often clearly phallic; kingly representations. These stones, consistently under threat from development, seem forgotten by modern Istanbul – a part of the street furniture, not part of a celebrated heritage. It’s a shame, but they are an extraordinary reminder of a time when archery was literally, the sport of kings.
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Thanks to the Arch Museum. For pictures of the target stones when Istanbul was largely open fields, click here.
Richard Priestman competed in three Olympic Games for Great Britain, and came home with two bronze medals from the team events in Seoul and Barcelona. He has been an archery coach since 1993, and has travelled the world coaching national sides. This year, he has been coaching the Columbian recurve squad, the women’s team achieving a silver medal in the Shanghai stage of the World Cup. Richard was kind enough to take some time to answer my questions via email while preparing for the upcoming stage in Antalya.
Can you explain how you got started in coaching in Britain?
I have always enjoyed coaching, even when I was a competitor I used to do a lot of coaching. When I retired from international archery in 1993, the GNAS (now Archery GB) asked me if I wanted to be involved in coaching and I was voted into the position of Director of Coaching and then went on to be the national Coaching Organiser for the national training squads.
Which countries have you coached in now and for how long?
I was coaching with the British team for approximately 10 years (no salary in those days), then worked as the national coach in Bangladesh for 2 separate periods – 2009 to 2011. In between, I worked for 5 months in Nepal with their national team (initially on behalf of the Asian Archery Federation) to help them prepare for the 2010 Asian Games. After the World Championships with Bangladesh in 2011, World Archery employed me as an agent to work on the Latin American Youth Development Project. I worked with 6 different countries: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela. My role was to hold 1 month training camps in each country in turn and then return to evaluate and further improve the archers and coaches in each country, specifically to raise standards in international competitions. I worked on this project for 2 years. I do keep in contact with many of the archers and coaches I have worked with in the past, I am always eager to see how they are all progressing even though I am not with them any more. I have been with so many countries that invariably my current team will end up competing against one of my former archers!
You were appointed as ‘temporary’ recurve coach for Brazil last year. How did that come about?
Brazil were without a national coach and World Archery wanted to support them, especially as they are the hosts for the Rio Olympic Games 2016, so I was asked if I would go there to help them. Originally I was temporary until Brazil could recruit a permanent national coach. Brazil did offer me the job but despite the rapid improvement in scores and some great results in international competitions, I decided that my future was to be elsewhere. I do wish them well for the future. They have some great talent, especially 16 year old Marcus Carvalho and Sarah Nikitin.
The Brazilian recurve team have, fairly suddenly, made quite an impact at the last two World Cup stages. How much of that would you say is down to changes you have made?
Sure, Brazil’s improvement came after several months of really hard training. They have a full time training camp. I made a lot of changes to their training schedules, increasing the numbers of arrows they were shooting, and made important improvements to their techniques. A lot of attention to detail. I changed their fitness training routines, improved eating habits and introduced many new ideas for the sports psychologist to work with the team.
How long have you been coaching the Columbian national side? Is it just the recurves?
I will work with the recurve team. Initially a lot of work with the mens team to improve standards, but I am sure I will cast my eyes over the compound archers and help them and their coaches. This is my first official week training in Colombia. I travelled to Shanghai for the first World Cup to be with the Colombian team, but had to return to England to apply for a work visa. I only arrived in Colombia one day before the start of the World Cup in Medellin.
It’s obviously been a fairly short time, but what changes have you made so far?
In the short time I have been with the Colombian team I have concentrated mostly on observing the team, looking at their strengths and weaknesses, but already making suggestions to the archers and their coaches. Now is right in the middle of the competition season so not the best time to make any major changes, but the mens team have already started the long process of change. I prefer a slow evolution of technique and thinking.
Is there a particular coaching ‘philosophy’ or strand of thinking you adhere to?
I have studied many different successful winning techniques over the past 40 years, from the USA team of the 70s to Russian male and female techniques, the different Korean techniques etc. I utilise best practices from all techniques I have seen and from my own shooting experience, make changes which I think are appropriate to the archer I am working with. Certainly I was influenced by great champions from the USA such as John Williams, Darrell Pace, Rick McKinney, top coaches such as Al Henderson, Kisik Lee and Kim Hyung Tak. Most of my coaching has been to work with already experienced archers, so it is very difficult and often destructive to their scores and confidence to make big changes to technique. I prefer a slow evolution to improve on what they already do. Much of my time has been spent fixing technique and physical weaknesses, importantly clearing misunderstandings about the techniques the archers have already been taught in the past.
I concentrate in getting the archer into a position where it is easier for them to make expansion. I want the archers to know where their expansion comes from, learn how to control the expansion under pressure and how to control their follow through to maximise their scores. All the archers who have worked with me know I like very much to utilise bow training exercises with their training, used in the right way, many of the archers problems will disappear with the appropriate exercises. I find with most developing archers, the biggest limitation to progress is physical, so that is where I usually start. Only once they are fit enough to control their bow can we effectively begin to improve skills and their mental game. I try to be a student of archery and I am always looking for new ideas.
With recurves, how do you teach the release phase of the shot cycle?
I teach the archers that they have to learn set up, engage and really feel the parts of their body they will use to make expansion. The archer must concentrate on expansion and commit to the expansion before, during and after click. The click is just there to signal the relaxation of the string fingers…expansion does not stop until the end of follow through. Release is not an action of taking the fingers off the bowstring, the bow string will push the relaxed string fingers out of the way. A typical good release will involve the string fingers moving in towards the neck on release rather than the fingers opening and moving away from the neck. I think it is very important too to encourage the archer to start expansion before or at the same time as they start to aim. If the archer waits until after aiming before they start expansion, then the shot will very likely be too slow and full of extra tension.
What’s your greatest strength as a coach?
I have a lot of experience both as an archer and as a coach. I have seen every kind of problems and mistakes made by archers and coaches. I do a lot of observation and discussions with the archers to help me understand how and why they make the mistakes they under pressure, then make solutions to help them fix and improve what they do. I aim to teach the archers to understand better their bodies and techniques, and how to prepare themselves better for competition, helping them to cut the mistakes to a minimum. Good scores are not made by shooting more tens but by learning how to stop the mistakes happening. If an archer prepares effectively for each shot, understands how a good shot should feel, visualises that process, then executes the process without fear, then the arrow has to be in the group. I expect all archers to eventually be self sufficient and not have to rely on a coach to perform well.
Do you believe in luck?
Definitely, many matches are won and lost with good or bad luck. Plus you can lose with a good score and win with a bad score.
What’s your favourite sport apart from archery, and why?
I love badminton, I used to play a lot in high school, and my son is now exceptionally good. He is one of the top under 17 players in England. Maybe one day I will become a badminton coach.
Are you going to stop travelling eventually?
I love travelling, I have been travelling ever since I was a small child, so probably unlikely I will ever stop. It has been a real pleasure to work in so many different countries, different languages, different cultures, and religions. I get more pleasure now helping archers to improve, shoot personal best scores, and to win medals than I ever did when I was a competitor.
Don’t forget, The Infinite Curve’s archery blogging world is as much based around Facebook and Twitter as it is this here page. So if you aren’t following me on social media, you should. Because you’ll miss out on all this cool stuff:
This thing, via goniart.com. I know not what it means, but it’s great.
Mariana Avitia placed fifth in individual recurve at the Medellin World Cup. read more about it here. Picture via @conade.
The two pics above were taken by Gabriel Buitrago at the Medellin World Cup a couple of days ago. (You can see the rest of his Flickr stream here.) They show the Korean women’s recurve team lining up like… well, schoolgirls, to listen to their coach, Ryu-Soo Jung. The lower pic catches at least the younger members of the Korean men’s team in mid-bow to their coach. Bowing in South-East Asian culture is a deeply ingrained part of society, and it’s not surprising to see in in sporting contexts, either. I visited Japan a few years ago and went to see a football match (FC Tokyo v Albirex Niigata) where the entire home team squad bowed to each section of each stand after the match, the whole process taking nearly ten minutes before the guys could go off and have a shower. I was personally bowed to for nothing more than buying a few postcards in a shop, which made me feel a bit awkward, frankly.
I ‘met’ Ryu-Soo Jung (above right) in Wroclaw last year, when I got slightly too close to her charges trying to get photographs of the Korean squad for you, dear readers. She gave me a look that could curdle milk. I got out of the way.
The culture of deference towards teachers – indeed, anyone older than yourself – in Korea is based upon Confucian principles, and the education system, while staggeringly successful on a global comparative scale, is frequently criticised by non-Asian Westerners for its pressure cooker atmosphere and lack of creativity, amongst much else. But in recurve archery, the standardised system of training and complete subservience to coaches has resulted in a deep pool of elite level archers, and a series of results which speak entirely for themselves. No one comes to archery later in life or even in their late teens – the talent is nurtured from age 6 and up. However, the junior archers fit the system, and not the other way around – left-handers, for example, are encouraged to take up other sports and will never make it through the high-school / university / professional system that could take them to an international event or the Olympics.
It is easy to say “this is how it’s done”, but realistically, there is no chance of this happening in any other country. These photographs are a visible representation of a long, deep, pragmatic and complex process that only happens in one place. You can import the coaches, the biomechanical approach to shooting, and the brutal levels of training, but you can’t import the social dynamics, sporting systems and money that Korea has in place to produce recurve archery champions over and over again.
It’s the last British Pathé Tuesday, and I’ve dug up a brief clip from 1937 featuring some footage from an archery competition in Lancaster, PA, some soundless instinctive trick shots, and… well, have a look for yourself. The voiceover is exactly the sort of posh, patronising rattle satirised so well by Harry Enfield in the 90s.
George Harding, 26, is shooting recurve for Great Britain in the upcoming World Cup in Medellín starting on Wednesday. He took some time out from preparation to answer my questions.
Is this your first senior international?
This is my first outdoor World Cup. I did a small international with the British team in Mexico in November. I have competed in a couple of international indoor competitions such as Face2Face, Vegas, Nimes and Telford.
How are you feeling now, three days out from the start?
I only found out I was going a couple of weeks ago, so I haven’t had much of a chance to think about it in between making sure everything is ready. I’m excited to be going to my first World Cup and massively grateful to Archery GB for giving me this opportunity.
What are your goals for Medellín?
My main goal is to stick to my shot process and enjoy being in this environment for the first time.
What did your typical practice day for this tournament look like?
A typical practice day would be:
Warm up
Close blank boss – 20-30 arrows
70m- 3 ends practice followed by a scored 720 (6 arrow ends)with 10 minute break halfway
Distance or close blank boss 20-30 arrows
Gym- Stability or Core program
Lunch
Warm up
Close blank boss – 20-30 arrows
70m- 3 ends practice followed by a scored 720 (6 arrow ends) with 10 minute break halfway
Somedays I will change the afternoon session a bit, either shooting 9 or 12 arrows ends for more volume, or adding in some matchplay practice.
What riser & limbs are you currently shooting and why?
I am currently shooting a Smartriser XM1 with Win&Win Ex-Prime limbs. I’ve spent a lot of time since the end of January testing bows and this is the one which performs the best on the range.
When I first heard about it in 2012 I was curious but sceptical. Having the opportunity to test one this spring was great. On opening the box I could see that this was a piece of equipment which had a lot of thought gone into its design and manufacture. The click adjustment system used for the tiller/ poundage is a great example of this.
The innovative use of structural carbon plates mounted an aluminium chassis along with internal hydraulic damping means that while the riser only weighs just over 960g, it still feels solid. The reduced mass of the riser means that I can use a lot more weight on the stabilisers, which of course adds to it’s stability.
I am still waiting on some results from more quantitive testing but the scores in practice are doing a good job of justifying my choice.
Do you believe in luck?
Yes, it’s just probability in action.
How do you maintain confidence?
I’m really fortunate to have a lot of support from the staff at the Archery GB Performance unit. I work closely with the psychologist who helps me to stay focussed on the things I am in control of as well as positive facts about my performances in practice and competition. Breaking down things which are worrying me into achievable chunks makes tackling daunting situations manageable.
Being able to work with Songi and Lloyd who have both worked with Olympic medalists is a big confidence boost. Between them they have a massive amount of knowledge which I have a lot of faith in.
Simple things like taking photos of good ends and recording scores could help every archer looking to improve.
What’s your favourite sport apart from archery?
I have a taste for extreme sports, anything on the Redbull TV channel and I’m interested.
Do you have any ideas as to how to raise archery’s profile?
Archery has a growing profile as it is. Nottingham City Council’s support of the National Series and European Champs in 2016 is a good example of this, as well as plans for the University of Nottingham to build a purpose built indoor archery range.
I think one way to progress archery is to introduce staged levels of competition. Archery is one of the few sports where a beginner can compete alongside an elite archer, events like the indoor World cups take this to the extreme. Having secondary competitions at these events adds an extra dimension which allows more people to be really involved in competing. Similarly expanding the National Series Finals to include the top eight qualifiers makes reaching the final an achievable goal for a lot more people, which will help raise the sports profile.
I really like how the regional university leagues give teams a chance to compete regularly, in a similar way to World Cups and, closer to home, the National Series. These series create an environment for producing narratives which can be used to sell archery. Opening these events up to spectators who might not have considered watching archery by hosting finals matches in iconic public locations is a great way of presenting archery to the world.
I’ve been meaning to do another video on an updated version of the nocking point I am now using. I would like to do more I’m just not sure what to do it on. Any suggestions welcome!
OK, some slightly less serious questions….
There’s a rapidly expanding trend towards selfies on social media in international archery. I presume you are not intending to buck this trend this week?
We’ll see. When I find myself in situations which would probably make a good photo I often don’t think to get my phone out, I know other members of the team are likely to be taking photos so I retweet those and enjoy the moment.
So, I wrote a piece for World Archery’s website about PJ Deloche and Braden Gellenthien, possibly going head-to-head at the Medellin World Cup next week. Enjoy!
Choi Bomin during official practice. 
