Sunday was even calmer than Saturday, so this will probably be short. (Well, that and I have my second class of the year in about an hour, and still have a few things to do beforehand.)
I went off to the Archery World Championships at Prince’s Gardens (I think that’s what it’s called—it’s the Something Gardens off Prince’s Street, anyway) to watch the women’s compound semis and finals and the men’s recurve semi and finals.
First off, don’t ever let anybody—even me—tell you that recurve isn’t as accurate as compound. It’s a little less reliably accurate, maybe, but there were still plenty of perfect sets. And both events were shot from the same distance. I don’t know exactly how far it was, but it had to’ve been close to eighty yards. Every time someone let an arrow off, it went hissing through the air alongside the stands. (SSssht!) That was cool. Even cooler was trying to imagine the sound a thousand arrows would make during some Hollywood blockbuster. :)
The scores for both men and women were incredibly close. In both instances, the difference between gold and silver was a single arrow. The American guy, Brady Ellison, won gold (beating out the South Korean, which surprised me—they always seem to win archery tournaments. =P) and the Amercian woman came in third. Apparently Brady Ellison has been doing some sort of cancer fundraiser, and his sponsors have agreed to match whatever he wins. And when he got up on the podium, he said he’d hit $10,000. Pretty cool to see someone doing such a good thing for the world. :)
Something funny I noticed—once the British woman had been knocked out, the crowd seemed to gravitate toward cheering for the American. Kind of interesting, I thought, since I’ve been told multiple times (all by Americans before I left) that they’re not so crazy about us.
Pictures of the matches to come!
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