Archery isn’t a big sport in South Africa, but members of the Olympic team are out to show that they can shoot with the best in Atlanta
ARCHERY: Julian Drew
COUNTRIES like Korea and Japan count their competitive archers in the tens of thousands and most of them compete in the recurve (Olympic) bow category. The South African National Archery Association (SANAA) has just 95 members, many of whom shoot the compound bow which is not included in the Olympics.
In the Olympic bow division there are only about 10 female archers competing in South Africa so one would not expect them to have much standing in the global scheme of things. But at last year’s World Archery Championships in Jakarta the South African women’s team came eighth to secure three places at the Olympic Games in July.
Unlike the world championships which have an unlimited entry, the only restriction being a maximum of four archers per country, the Olympics are restricted to 64 archers, with a maximum of three per country. Forty-six places were filled based on the results in Jakarta. The top three from each of the five continental championships plus three “wild cards” will make up the remainder.
On Wednesday the three women in the Olympic team plus the current men’s number one, Dave Pastoll, left for Atlanta for a pre-Olympic Grand Prix tournament at the Stone Mountain Park range where the Olympic competitions will take place.
Pastoll won the African title in Harare last August and South Africans Gary Shires and Deon Louw filled the remaining medal spots, a feat repeated by the women, and could thus go to Atlanta on a continental championship ticket. But the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa) decided that, for the majority of Olympic sports, qualifying through Africa was a soft option and therefore these sports must qualify through the normal world ranking tournaments.
The women’s team achieved this but the men have been given another chance, and if any of them can shoot a score which will put them in the world’s top 44 before the end of April they will be selected.
At the world championships in the women’s individual competition Jill Borreson came 15th, Kirstin Lewis 36th, Rita Schenk 59th and Leanda Hendricks 111th. Borreson and Lewis, who were both on Nocsa’s Operation Excellence support programme, were automatically included in the Olympic team while Schenk and Hendricks had to have a trial in Durban in January to see who would get the third spot.
They followed the format of the Olympic competition, which is different to that of the world championships, and shot only from a distance of 70m. They first shot a round of 72 arrows which at the Olympics is used to rank the 64 archers for the subsequent elimination rounds. Here, consistency is the key. This was followed by three elimination rounds of 18 arrows which at the Olympics are sudden death and require an archer to be able to shoot under pressure. The ranking round was allocated two points, the elimination rounds one each and the overall score from the four rounds a further point.
Schenk scored much higher in the ranking round which, barring total capitulation, meant she also had the point for the overall score already in the bag and thus had to win only one elimination round to win the trial. But then Hendricks showed why she is an ideal Olympic competitor by winning all three elimination rounds to level the score at three points each. It was down to a sudden death eliminator of 12 arrows, the number used at the Olympics from the quarter-finals onwards. Hendricks won and is now Atlanta bound.
Given that archery is such a male-dominated sport in South Africa, it is not so surprising that the vocations pursued by the three ladies in the Olympic team are also more often than not considered to be the domain of men. Lewis, who at 20 is the baby of the team, is studying chemical engineering at the University of Cape Town while Borreson, who is 22, completed her degree in architecture at the University of Natal last year.
Hendriks is the odd one out. She is much older at 32 and is no longer working after giving up her job last year as a coal saleslady for the family’s coal concession in Middelburg so that she could try and qualify for the world championships. She is also the least experienced archer of the three. “I had always been interested in archery but it just isn’t a visible sport, at least in Johannesburg,” says the former captain of Greenside High’s athletics team. “Three years ago my boyfriend’s cousin asked us to come and try it and we both got hooked. I seemed to have a natural talent for whatever it is that you need in archery and I kept setting myself higher and higher goals and then the Olympics came into sight,” reveals Hendricks.
Three weeks before the trials for last year’s world championships she decided to stop working and concentrate full time on her sport. “There were three other women with a lot more experience than me going for the trials and I realised I would either have to give up my job or give up my dream,” claims Hendricks.
The gamble paid off but when she got to Jakarta she got stage fright. “The biggest competition I had been to was the South African championships where there were just five participants and all of a sudden there were 75 archers on the line. They were people I had been reading about in books and they all had such amazing equipment. I was overwhelmed.
” I finally understood what it meant to be living at the bottom of Africa and what isolation is really about. It was a tremendous experience for me and although I didn’t shoot so well what I brought back with me has certainly empowered me for the Olympics,” says Hendricks.
The other members of the Jakarta team all competed in the 1993 world championships in Turkey. Hendricks’ 111th position in the qualifying round was not good enough to reach the elimination stage where she handles the pressure so well. That is only for the top 64. In Atlanta she will automatically go on to the elimination stage because at the Olympics there are only 64 participants and the first round is only for the ranking for the elimination rounds.
Borreson is the one who has spent the most time in the sport after starting archery at the age of 10. “I saw an archery competition on television when I was eight and I told my mum that was what I wanted to do. My dad was still at varsity at the time and I had to wait two years until he finished. When I asked my mum again if she had found me a club she couldn’t believe that I still remembered that I wanted to do this crazy sport.
“She didn’t think I would stand the whole day on an archery field but she found me a club in Durban and I’ve been there ever since,” says Borreson.
Although she started work with an architectural practise in January, she is only working mornings. “I practise four-and-a half- hours in the afternoons and do gym for two- and-a-half hours in the evenings and that’s my day finished,” she says.
Lewis started archery six years ago after seeing the archery range in Retreat during a family cycle ride from their home in Constantia. She also played water polo for Western Province while at school but had to give that up when she started at university. “I had to decide whether I wanted to do a team sport or an individual sport so I chose archery,” says Lewis.
The pre-Olympic tournament which starts in Atlanta next week is a dress rehearsal for the Olympics to ensure that everything will run smoothly. It will follow exactly the same format as the Games. “It will provide invaluable experience for us as a team because we will be competing against most of the people who will be at the Olympics,” says Hendricks. “It is important to get used to the pressure of elimination competitions.
“You have to shoot an arrow every 40 seconds and a caller gives your score after each shot and then your opponent has 40 seconds to shoot. So unless you can switch off completely you know whether your opponent is ahead and you are under tremendous pressure to perform. What it basically boils down to is that if you have one bad arrow you are out of the competition,” says Borreson.
But all three agree that it’s the best way of establishing the top archer on the day. “What is so nice about the Olympic elimination rounds is that who ever has got the balls and can hold it all together will be the winner on the day,” says Lewis. In the high pressure cauldron that is the Olympic Games what better way could there be of determining the champion?