Archery: String section ready

By PETER CALDER

Robin Hood hewed his from yew or oak, and the fletches on the arrow ends were turkey or goose feather. But the archers in Olympic competition which starts tomorrow will be drawing space-age bows.

The weaponry is as ancient as cave drawings, but modern archers work with shapes of eerie beauty which seem to come straight from science fiction.

The carbon-fibre bows are festooned with struts and stays and guides and shock absorbers of aluminium and stainless steel and the string which clicks into the arrow's slot is 18-strand nylon.

Archery, a sport in which only seven New Zealanders have competed at Olympic level, is dominated by Korea, Japan, Italy and France.

And the New Zealand hopes are on the shoulders of two young men with fewer than 40 years of life between them.

Boys suddenly called on to shoot like men, they are teenagers to each other, trading jocular insults about such vital matters as the colour of their equipment. At work, by contrast, they are anything but intimidated by the company they're keeping in Sydney.

At the archery centre at Olympic Park yesterday, Ken Uprichard, 20, of Christchurch and 18-year-old Peter Ebden from Belmont on Auckland's North Shore were gung-ho about what lies ahead.

Uprichard - cool as ice with his frosted hair, earring and goatee beard - was taking the day off, relaxing in the sun after slightly straining a shoulder muscle in practice on Monday and enthusing about the Mini van ("a grouse wee thing") he's doing up at home.

Younger still, Peter Ebden strode proudly around the range with mascot figurines from South Park and McDonald's hanging from his quiver.

"This one my sister gave me," he said, holding up a bow-wielding soft Kiwi, "so I've got to wear that or she'd kill me."

Uprichard studied through mirror sunglasses the Korean team firing with mechanical regularity a few metres away.

"Yeah," he said. "There are a couple of faces here I guess I look up to. But I'll still beat them on the day if I have to."

It's not cockiness but attitude he's displaying. Bill Skews, the gently avuncular archery manager, who patiently explains the mathematical and technical complexities of his sport to a curious novice, said that what separated winners and losers in archery was less technique than mind control.

"This is a game for wild-cards," he said. "You can have all the skills in the world but if you haven't got it together on the day, you're gone."

The wind that has jostled Sydney and worried Games officials for the past week has been testing the archers as much as anybody.

Even in yesterday's light breezes they were making adjustments of up to 150mm to allow for sideways movement of an arrow travelling 70m to the 122cm diameter target at almost 300 km/h.

Some of that adjustment is technique, but, said Skews, gut instinct had to play a part as well.

Skews, a karate black belt who took up archery only eight years ago, admitted he was not a patch on the two Kiwis' regular coaches who could not come because the team were allowed only one official.

He said he offered them technical advice if they asked for it but what he dispensed mostly was reassurance.

"If they're in a bit of a jam, I can redirect them, maybe. Sit them back on their bum again."

Compatriots these two archers may be but the remorseless progress of the head-to-head elimination matchplay rounds means there's a slender chance the two youngsters will shoot against each other. At that point, national solidarity goes out the window.

"You can't get sentimental," said Ebden. "If I showed him any mercy, he'd annihilate me."