Day 1 at the Indoor Archery World Cup in Singapore

I arrive in Singapore for the first leg of the 2012 Indoor Archery World Cup a day before it started. I spent the day getting accustomed with their metro/sky train system (SMRT) and doing a bit of sightseeing. On the morning of December 8, I woke up very early and at around 6am I was already having breakfast at an Indian restaurant near my hotel on Geylang Rd.

I took the SMRT for a few stations and then a taxi to the ITE College East where the world cup was taking place. The circular campus of the college is not immense, but its many exits, staircases and lifts can be quite confusing for a first time visitor. Luckily, the place was well marked by the organizers with arrow signs and target faces. I found their messages (“This way,” “Keep going,” and “You’re almost there”) quite inspiring taking into consideration the event I was about to compete in.

When I finally reached the sports hall where the world cup was to take place I was pleasantly surprised by the conditions the participants had at their disposal. It was already 9:30am and the men’s compound qualification round was already under way. As I walked to the warm up area at the far side of the hall, I spotted the US compound archers Reo Wilde, Logan Wilde and Jay Hayden offhandedly chatting about their shoot.

The recurve men were due to shoot their qualification rounds later in the afternoon (after the two morning rounds shot by the compound men and women) so I had all the time in the world to set up my bow and start warming up. The morning practice session went quite well, with all arrows going in the gold. I was confident, relaxed and ready to start shooting at 14:00. Unfortunately, things reached a slow drag towards 12 o’clock and the recurve archers had to wait until 15:30 to start shooting.

Luckily, the long wait did not tire me as I kept replenishing my energy levels with some good sandwiches I had brought from Bangkok and some bananas I had bought the night before in Singapore. I continued to practice and stay warmed up until the competition started. About one hour before the recurve event started, US Olympic silver team medalist Jake Kaminski started warming up. Shooting on the same line with him gave me a major boost of energy and I was able to feed off his aura of confidence and thus prepare mentally for the qualifying round.

I did my equipment check quite early and was given, as a gift, a Cartel arrow puller and an official World Archery pin. I didn’t really need the arrow puller as I already had one and, once I returned to Bangkok, I actually gave it to one of the para-archers training at Hua Mark Archery Field. But, I was very happy to add the pin to my extensive collection of pins. It went immediately on my quiver.

We were given only 3 arrows to warm up at the competition target and then we started recording our score. I shot at a target together with Yotov Ivan from Bulgaria and two other Asian archers. I started off with all arrows in the gold but as the games continued, I had a few stray arrows in the first red ring. I remained calm throughout the first round and every time I concentrated on my shooting form and all the steps I had to go through for a perfect shot, my shooting was clear.

I finished the first 30 arrows with a score of 281 points which put me on the 17^th place out of 68 recurve men archers. I was relatively happy with my score, but I was not happy with the few 8s I had shot. But, I was in the top 20 archers and that was good as only the top 32 archers could move on to the elimination round.

As always, my second score was much higher than the first one. Totally relaxed and not caring at all about my score, I managed a personal record of 286 points which put me on the 16^th place with total of 567 points (out of 600 possible). Right above me was Thomas Aubert (FRA) with 569 points and below me was Yotov Ivan (BLG) with 265 points. In comparison, the first place was claimed by Shu Chieh Chang (TPA) with a whooping 589 points.

For me the day was a major success. Not only was I able to qualify for the next day of the competition I also scored a personal best. By the time I put my bow back in the case I knew that the next day I would shoot my 1/16 elimination round against Yotov Ivan and in case I was successful, I would face first seed Shu Chieh Chang.

It was a good day for archery!