Tokyo Olympics...

Yup Howard was a little before my time but being an avid boxing fan of course I am familiar with him. It’s a struggle to catch. Olympic boxing sometimes. There have been times they don’t air it in my area. I was working with a work release program for inmates and had the pleasure of dealing with a pro boxer who was born in my state. He got himself in a jam but damn he spent most of his time with us mentoring the young gang bangers (he grew up on the streets so he had a message the younger guys listened to.) and giving some boxing lessons. We stayed in touch for a while after his discharge but not too long. Understandable I mean I’m not like in that circle. He actually dropped off after one of his last fights where he lost in a pretty horrible manner.
Anyway I’m still hoping Lithuania wins everything except maybe boxing. El Salvador as well, really want them to do well. If El Salvador and Lithuania take at least 80% of all the gold I’ll be a happy guy. Yes I’m an American I just like Lithuania and El Salvador.

Mixed team event is over and first ever Olympic medal in this goes to....Korea...of course...



By far the biggest upset of the day is the #2 ranked US losing in the first round to 15th ranked Indonesia. Team rounds can often be wild and sometimes brutal.



US team shoots bunch of 8's, a 7, and a....6! Ouch! They were fortunate to tie it up and go to a shoot off, and while the Indonesians shot 2 perfect 10's, the US dropped another 8 and sealed their fate. We'll have to see what this does to the two US archers psychologically going forward.

I understand the IOC's position, and that of the various world governing bodies for the sports when they capitulate to the IOC's demands. IOC is trying to make sure TV revenues are good for them, and the sports will do just about anything to stay in the Olympics.

There is so much competition for the various sports to be included in the Olympics that aside from the marquis events, everyone else is seemingly always "on the bubble" of being dropped. So as a sport, you do what you have to do to stay in the Games.

For archery, the fact that we have a mixed team medal is simply amazing. I was involved in the administration of the sport for years on the national level (I was chairman of the High Performance Committee for Archery Canada - set qualifying criteria, Olympic trials format, allocated all the money for teams, uniform selections, athlete development models, anti-doping efforts, helped arbitrate disputes, etc.) and I can't tell you how many times the world governing body would report back to us telling us that "archery will not get any more medals in the Olympics."

Back then it wasn't about a mixed team event like this, but getting archery in the Winter Olympics in the form of ski-archery - a bit like biathlon but with a bow and arrow instead of a rile. After a number of tries we basically gave up.

I would like to see some of this too. I do like the main sports, but I also like a lot of the more obscure sports.

So the women's team event in archery is over, and guess who won?

Korean women of course. We'll see if the men's team event tomorrow can stop a Korean sweep!

First, I think the crowd v no crowd situation plays out very differently depending on the sport. I can say with complete confidence that there were zero crowds at any archery event I ever participated in. This excludes archers who were already eliminated that sat and watched, but generally most events have no crowd.

There is now a World Cup circuit that didn’t exist when I was competing, and there you do see some small crowds. Only at major games would you typically have larger crowds, so Olympics and other games like Pan Am Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. When I went to the 2015 Pam Am Games that were held in Toronto as a spectator, I was shocked that the stands for archery were packed.

So for many more obscure sports, this is likely a continuation of the normal way of things. In other sports I’m sure people feel it more. I’m very curious how the lack of crowds will impact the track and field events for example.

Korea is a very dominant country in archery, in particular the women. The men are too generally, with the exception being the Olympics. There they have had less success than in other events. I have a friend who is of Korean descent who went there to live and go to an archery high school. Classes in the morning and the rest of the day was training. People there are on pro teams and make a living at it, so unlike pretty much any other country. At that time they had an abundance of teenagers that could beat a lot of the top archers around, so the depth there is unequaled anywhere else.

There was some thought that because Korea had not competed internationally since the start of the pandemic (they had earned their full quota of archers at the 2019 world championships, and didn’t compete much after that even when events started again), that they might be somewhat rusty in that competitive mindset, but the competition within the country is so high that I don’t think it was really a concern.

Some of the top coaches around are Korean, so the most famous is the current US coach, who before that was the Australian coach where an Aussie won the gold in the men’s competition in 2000. There is a sort of Korean technique, but there are other successful technique ideas as well, including some that are unorthodox, so I really think it’s a mindset as much as anything.

Men's team event is over, and the Korea train keeps rolling. Another gold for them. They had a pretty easy time of it except in the semi-final against host nation Japan (who I don't think anyone would have seen as a real contender to be honest).

If you want to watch a fun match, that's one certainly. In all the rest of Korea's matches, they won 6 set points to 0, so clean sweeps. In this semi-final, after 4 sets they were tied at 4 set points each, which means there is a shoot off to see who advances to the gold medal match, and who shoots for bronze.

Each archer shoots one arrow each, and there are three archers on each team - max. points is 30. Both teams shot identical scores of 28, so a 10 and a pair of 9's. Normally the higher score advances, but when the shoot off is tied, they determine the winner by who has the arrow that is closest to the center of the target (like old Robin Hood movies) and Korea had a 10 that was closer than Japan's 10.

Japan went on to the bronze medal match against the Dutch, and again it was tied after 4 sets, and went to a shoot off. Identical scores to the previous shoot off they had, so both teams shot a 10 and pair of 9's again. This time though the final Japanese archer had a chance to win it if he shot a 10 that was closer to the middle than the Dutch teams, and on the final arrow of the match he did just that. Won the the bronze, so a good Olympics in archery so far for Japan!

Individual matches start tomorrow (later tonight here) so I'll be watching the Canadians for sure.

Individual matches have started - some postponed due to the weather, which is a bit odd. The only thing we typically cancel shooting for is lightning, because holding a carbon/aluminum bow in your hand in an open field in lightning tends not to be a good idea. The weather was changing by the minute - windy one minute, pouring rain the next, and then bright sunshine. In this shot of an archer from Kazakhstan, you can see the rain pouring down - the black background looks streaky, and that's the rain:



Archery is leading some Olympic innovation at these Games. It's the first sport to have live data on athlete physiology as they compete. In the lower left of the screen you can see the heart rate of the archer as they are shooting:



They apparently do this with remote sensors focused on the skin. I expect we'll see more of this sort of thing in future Olympics. Archery isn't a sport where you run and jump around, but the heart rate can still be elevated - saw a few archers with the heart rate well over 150 beats per minute.

First up was our female archer Stephanie, seen here entering the field:



Up against an archer from Turkey. It was a tough match...



When she executed the shots strongly and quickly, things were pretty good. When she had longer shots, the arrows were consistently pulling left - way left. She won the first 3 arrow set, so went up 2-0, but after that things went downhill. In one set both archers shot 5's, which is way out from where arrows should be at this level - Stephanie shot a couple in that one set:



Here she is with my friend Shawn who is the coach:



In the end it wasn't to be...





Next up was Crispin, up against an archer from Moldova.



Shot strong in this first match generally, and it went very well.



Crispin won in straight sets - scores weren't huge but enough to get the job done, which is really all that matters:



Next up he met the archer I showed above from Bangladesh, who won his first match. This archer shot well - strong quick shots.



Crispin lost the first set, but took the next two pretty handily, but then the other archer came back. So it was tied at 4 set points each. If either archer won the next set, they would advance, and if they tied they would go to a one arrow shoot off.

Talking about making strong shots...



Crispin started the last set and shot a 7 - not good. The other archer shot a 9. Crispin followed with a really strong 10, and the other archer shot an 8. Tied at 17 points each with one arrow to go. Crispin shot a 9 so the door was open. If the other archer shot a 10 he would win, a 9 would be a tie, and anything less than a 9 Crispin would win. The other archer shot what looked like a very good strong shot, but it landed near the top of the 9 ring, just out - it was an 8 and Crispin won!



So he is now moving on to shoot another day. He was ranked 16th after the ranking round, and with this win he is in the top 16, so that is sort of the initial goal - at least equal where you were in the ranking round in the eliminations.

He won't shoot again for a few days, and when he does he'll be shooting against an archer from Germany that came 33rd in the ranking round, so hopefully that will go well. Late night and I'm tired, but it was worth it.

One of my favourite Olympic moments so far, even though she had just beaten one of our Canadians swimmers who won the silver...


Love it.

Straya lol