So we got up sprightly and early (and ill-tempered initially, because of the early start) and made our way by fast, efficient London transport (no, really, it was) to the Olympic Archery in St John's Wood. Lord's to be precise:-
We watched Larry Godfrey from the UK (
not GB, despite all the 'Team GB' hype, grump, grump) fail to get through to the quarter finals:-
But he did it with good grace and we were all very involved. I enjoyed the event - in fact, rather like John Finnemore on the Now Show Olympics Live this week, I discovered it is really good fun watching people who are really extremely good indeed at doing something do that thing, and it does seem to matter if complete strangers you happen to share a country with turn out to be even better at that thing than some other complete stangers who live further away. Who'd have thought it?
The targets are light years away from where the archers stand, and they don't get many chances to get it right. Basically, they just stand and shoot. Two compete at a time, and if at the end of their competition it is all square, they just shoot one more arrow each and nearest to the middle wins. Quite brutal.
It turns out that South Korean people really like archery, there were a lot in the stands, and their archers are really quite good at it (three went through to the quarter finals). So I learnt quite a lot too.
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