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You will have to excuse this post as being a little more self-indulgent than usual, but we feel as we near the end of our term of office that we could get away with it. We thought we should tell you about our top three moments in archery over the last twelve months. The first two are from the Olympics – the last from our Club events.
Coming in at number 3 is the shoot-off between Ki Bo Bae of Korea and Rand Al-Mashhadani of Iraq in the women’s rounds at the London Olympics. Rand, just 17, and from a country known for reasons other than sport, and clearly overcome by where she was, failed to beat Ki Bo Bae. Despite this her joyous enthusiasm shone through. She thoroughly enjoyed herself and did her country proud. We were drawn to tears as she shot against the mechanical methodology of the Korean girl who seemed to show little emotion.
At No. 2 is the 15year old (ranked at No. 47) Dan Olaru’s (Moldova) challenge against Jake Kaminski (ranked at no 18) of the USA. Dan went down in the first two sets, equalled on the third and won the last two taking the pair to a one arrow shoot off. By this time Jake’s timing had failed whilst Dan’s apparent text book shooting and casual smiles paid off, taking him through to the next round. It was however Dan’s smiles and contentment that touched us, and made this a great moment.

And finally to Number 1. It has to be Grace Windram’s joy and happiness on Saturday 27th April at Moulton College when she received her medals for winning gold in her class in our last indoor tournament of the season. Once again we were drawn to tears as Grace overwhelmed us with her elation. A lesson to us all. Without smiles and happiness there is no sport. Thanks to Robyn for the photo.

David and Heather