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Tuesday August 18 |
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Last evening we had a wonderful storm blow in. Courtney was lying on his bed listening to his MP3 player and I was writing my journal. I heard T.J. next door on his balcony talking about the lightening in the distance. Then I heard the thunder. Courtney was so into his music that he didn’t even notice. We turned off the overhead light and watch/listened to the storm roll in. It became really windy and rainy. We had to pull in the shirts we had drying on the balcony and the bow case. Courtney said there was lots of lightening, but I couldn’t hear any more thunder. T.J. said the lightening stayed high in the clouds and that was why there wasn’t much thunder.
The day went much like before. I stayed in the room until noon while Courtney went to the field and lugged equipment and pulled arrows and scored for the other archers on the team. I decided I would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the field rather than face chicken and rice again in the dining room. That was a good decision. The day was much cooler than before, mid 70’s.
I warmed up a bit by shooting “blank bale.” They stack hay bales in a few areas and the archer can stand a few yards away and just practice form. I was feeling confident in my shot and expected to do well. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite pull it off and shot below my average both rounds. I am happy with my total score, but I didn’t break any records today. I finished off in second place. The archer from Italy shot very consistently and had a very high score. He has an interesting technique which has led to a lot of discussion.
Tomorrow the visually impaired archers will shoot semi finals and finals. Massimiliano will get what is called a “buy” and will not shoot the semi finals since he is in first place after the qualifier. Ruben and I will shoot the semifinals. The winner of the semifinals will go on to shoot against Massimiliano in the gold medal round.
The semifinal and final rounds work a little differently. This will be head to head competition. Each archer will get 30 seconds to shoot an arrow. We will shoot a total of 3 arrows per end. There will be 4 ends, 12 arrows total. The higher ranked archer will get to choose weather he/she wants to shoot first or second. I out rank Ruben, so I will get to choose. I will choose to shoot first because I would rather set the bar for him then the other way around. When they say to start, I will shoot and then the clock will start over for Ruben. He should load his arrow while I am shooting so he has the full 30 seconds to make his shot. In Korea, I kept forgetting to load my arrow while the other archer was shooting and that can make it more stressful. We also have the added stress of spectators watching and teams rooting for their archer. The scores are posted at the targets for the spectators to follow the competition. It will be fun.
Dinner was actually pretty good. The meet tasted a lot like corned beef. Of course there were the ubiquitous noodles or rice, but they actually had green pees which were good. Courtney was hungry though; their meat portions are not enough for him. The other choice for dinner sounded disgusting. It was called ostrich egg and minced mead. One of the teammates said it looked like potato with an egg inside and minced mead. Not appetizing. He said he didn’t think it was really an ostrich egg.
We played crazy eights with another coach, Paul after dinner until it was time for our team meeting at 8:00. The rest of the team are starting there elimination rounds. They start with 1/32 rounds and then go to 1/1, 1/8, and ¼ tomorrow. Semifinals and finals will be another day. Randi gave everyone their shooting times. Depending on their division, they are pared up according to how they shot in the qualifier. Not sure exactly how that all works. The visually impaired go directly into semifinals because there are only 3 of us.
Remember, the results are posted online at www.archery.org, under Paralympic World Championships. There is also a link where they have posted photos for each day.
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