CBC Beijing The Olympic Games 2008The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic GamesCBC Beijing The Olympic Games 2008

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Aug 16, 08 11:23 AM

What a run it’s been. I don’t know where to start, now that it’s over. Ups and downs, frustrations and elations, surprises and expectations, it was a little bit of everything.

As a distant observer who occasionally woke up at 2:30 a.m. to watch the results in real time on the web, I have to say that it was awesome how fast the reporting happened. Even so, I caught myself hitting the reload button when the auto-refresh wasn’t happening fast enough for my taste.

I was excited to watch my friends and competitors as they won and lost. Surprisingly, often I managed to guess the value of the next arrow when I couldn’t even see the archer or the venue. People in the surrounding apartments must have wondered what was going on as I yelled incoherent encouragement at my computer screen.

And they didn’t get to hear the strangest ones. Before and after the matches, I would text-message inspirational epithets such as “Today you make Magnus into Minimus.”

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Aug 9, 08 11:10 AM

In the weeks leading up to the Games, every one of our Olympic team set new personal bests in tournaments. Each of them seemed to be peaking for Peking

J.D. Burnes set and then reset his best in a FITA 1440 round, scoring a solid 1290 and then 1293 points out of the possible 1440. Jay Lyon set a new Canadian record at the Olympic ranking round, earning 669 out of a possible 720 points. Not to be outdone, Crispin Duenas shot a 670 and a 672 a few days later. And finally, Marie-Pier Beaudet, our lone women’s representative, shot a new national record of 1330 in a FITA 1440 round.

With all this great shooting going on, it was an exciting time for those of us who were watching.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Jul 15, 08 09:51 PM

It’s been a good couple of weeks for me, if not for archery in Canada.

After sleeping for about 16 hours on my return from France I was ready to get back to work. At a coach’s suggestion, I built myself a new grip that realigns my hand and takes torque out of my shot. The idea is that it’ll help keep me from spraying sevens and sixes out to the sides when the pressure’s on.

My first real test came eight shooting days after I started the experiment when my wife and I road-tripped to Sacramento for the California Cup. It’s one of my favourite tournaments, always well run and always with great weather.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Jul 1, 08 02:37 PM

With the end of June came the last Archery World Cup event in Boé, France, and it turned out to be a multifaceted, complicated and murky affair.

Along with being a World Cup event, it was the final chance for some countries to get an Olympic sot. For some it was the final pre-Olympics warm-up and for others, like me, it was the last real international major of their shooting season.

With so much going on and with so many people interested in the shoot for different reasons, it was trying to be a bit of everything to everyone. In the end I think the French Federation had bit off more than it could chew.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Jun 19, 08 09:28 AM

On the Tuesday after trials it started to hit me. Sitting in the airplane at the gate waiting to take off to come back to Vancouver I cried a little and then I went mostly numb. I watched a couple of movies to keep from thinking about it, but the worst part was waiting for me when I got back.

I still had to tell everyone I know -- family, fellow archers, sponsors, non-shooting friends, people I’ve met around town or at the range -- that the one thing I’ve been working towards for the past two decades slipped through my fingers once more.

Over and over I had to relive not making the Olympic archery team. Everyone was great and I got a tonne of support, but that didn’t make a single note or phone call any easier. Then I walked around my apartment for two days wondering what to do.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | Jun 4, 08 04:44 PM

They’ve been a long time coming, these Canadian archery trials. In fact it’s been since July 13, 2007, the day Crispin Duenas, Jay Lyon and I earned three Olympic spots for Canada by placing eighth in the team round at World Championships in Germany.

I’d been trying to get to my first Olympic trials for almost 20 years. Over that span I’ve probably shot more than half a million arrows in practice, and spent about the same in dollars. Since the end of last season alone I’d shot 21,022 arrows, which amounts to more than a million pounds of draw weight pulled.

I’d set up four different bows, tried out and carefully tuned three different sets of arrows and spent many hours of meticulous data-gathering to get the most forgiving set-up I could. I fine-tuned my tournament plan over four major and four minor events. In the last week of training alone I had the opportunity to do a final test in calm, wind and rain, and all was good.

I was ready.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | May 27, 08 09:18 PM

With a week left before Olympic Trials, it was time that I came East to start adjusting to the Eastern Time zone and climate. As an added bonus, there was the New Jersey Gold Cup archery tournament. It’s a similar tournament format to trials and a lot of my Canadian competitors were going to be there, so it was a great chance to practice and see how the others are doing.

I hopped on a plane for the four-and-a-half hour flight from Vancouver to Toronto, where I spent a day at my coach's house before packing his van at the crack of dawn for the drive to New Jersey.

After eight hours cooped up in a van travelling over bumpy toll roads, inching through hour-long construction delays and eating roadside fast food, we arrived at the field cramped, dehydrated and weary. Nevertheless, the practice session was almost over and we had to unload our gear and stretch as best we could to get a few arrows in before checking into our glamorous one-star hotel for the weekend.

Continue reading this post »

Posted by Hugh Macdonald | May 19, 08 05:50 PM

The Victoria Day long weekend heralded the coming of the Canada’s major archery event for the western provinces, the 12th Canada Cup Archery Tournament in Victoria, B.C. And what a weekend it was.

We couldn’t have asked for better. With so much sun and warm, calm weather after our beleaguered spring, the buzz on the shooting line was, “How do you shoot when it’s nice out?”

The tournament was a marathon of shooting over three days, comprised of four events and three formats, making it a perfect transition from a final burst of pure training to honing my performance under pressure.

Continue reading this post »