Tuesday, October 13, 2009

On the way ...

Several months form my last post, again. A very busy year, trying to develop a new archery team for Ireland in 2012 perspective. In the mean time, archery is changing.
Ogden Youth World Archery Target Championships and Youth Olympic games qualifier, then Ulsan World Target Archery Championships have established new standards for those that would like to reach the Olympic Dream in 2012. I admit I was a little bit unprepared to the stellar technical levels reached by these championships. I was expecting a sort of linear worldwide increase of performances, and I have found that the increase is logarithmic. Top Recurve Juniors are already all shooting at senior level, and senior level is already on the moon and over. Tie breaks in between 3 teams to enter the 16 top teams have been an absolute first. And, everything says it will be a game for more teams in 2011 when all the world will play to get Olympic places for London.
After World Championship in Liepzig 2007 I forecasted that Olympics for archery were going to be more and more an Asian game, only. Now, I'm pretty sure about this. And, to try to compete against Asian countries playing the game they are playing will get to nothing.
European and other Western countries have to play it the Western way, if they want to see London in 2012 from the inside of the archery venue.
Imitating Koreans has never led to anything concrete in this side of the world. Repeating again and again the same cloned formulas has never given any positive result here.
But, with fantasy and imagination, there are other ways to reach the ambitious Olympic dream.
I like to think the Heretic way being one of them, and time will tell, again.

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