2008 Olympics Updates

I spoke out against GB head coach Peter Suk immediately after my quarter-final defeat at the Olympic Games and then retracted it on reflection in my blog later that day.

Since then, I’ve had more time to reflect and I stand by what I originally said and if a lot of things don’t get better, I will pack it in and that’s not me being a sore loser.

Concerns need to be raised for the benefit of the whole of GB archery - if we can push on, the funding will get there, if not, the sport goes back to no funding and fewer competitors.

The next three or four years are going to be interesting with London 2012 coming up - we should get more input into what we need to become world and Olympic champions.

I know I’m capable of winning Olympic medals, but I need to have the right support.

This is the first year since I turned senior in 2002 that I’ve not won a medal in target or field archery despite shooting better than ever.

That has been down to a lack of confidence and the mental side of things and things going on behind the scenes.

This year, everything was wrong in the build-up to the Olympics with the selections for the World Cup circuit.

If we bombed out in the first round of a competition, Peter would say don’t worry - but confidence gets knocked if you’re not doing well.

We need a do-or-die mentality - put everything in until your fingers bleed.

We weren’t prepared properly.

I have no problem with Peter away from archery, but we have different methods within the sport.

Team morale was low at the Team GB holding camp in Macau but Peter said he expected that because of nerves and that it would be alright when we got to Beijing. But it wasn’t and it was down to the team to try and lift ourselves when we should have been focusing on competing.

Since my quarter-final defeat at the Olympics, I have not spoken to Peter. He left for Korea straight after the competition; there was no de-brief as we have always had after every other event, which was a bit strange.

I have always worked with my own personal coach at home and things have always gone perfectly - I have always been in charge and every medal I’ve ever won I’ve done by learning how to approach different matches mentally.

This year, the confidence has been non-existant and by the time I was knocked out at the Olympics, it was the first time I had lost control in a match situation.

I want to emphasise though that I really enjoyed my first Olympics experience despite the problems.

We’ve got a meeting in October with all the British archers who competed at the Olympics and Paralympics which will hopefully sort some things out.

Before that I’m off to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace as part of the big parade through London with all the other British Olympians on 16 October, which I’m really looking forward to.

Away from the competition, I had a great time in Beijing, spending time with my mates and going to watch other sports.

The best was watching Beth Tweddle in the gymnastics - we went because we know a few of the gymnasts from training at Lilleshall - I’ve never been to a gymnasium hall, it was massive and the atmosphere was great, particularly when the Chinese were competing.

Beth was unlucky and, even though we didn’t know much about the technical side, we thought her performance deserved third!

The athlete’s village is not as mad as everyone makes out - there were a lot of people there who still hadn’t competed when we had finished, so there is respect for everyone else.

It’s a different story in the city though - the bars were rammed, mainly with Australians! I tended to stick with the archery lads and lasses from Australia, America and Canada as we all know each other through competing across the world - it was a brilliant experience.

Me and Larry Godfrey had a few good days enjoying ourselves but we had the option to come home a day early before the closing ceremony, so we did.

When I got home and saw the closing ceremony and the plane carrying the rest of the team, I thought it would have been nice to be on it, but then it was nice to arrive at Heathrow and slip through unnoticed.

Since I got back to Cumbria, I’ve had a bit of post-Olympics blues - out in Beijing we were living in a bubble and everything was done for you so we could enjoy ourselves and focus on our event.

But when we got back, nobody told us how hard it is to get back to reality.

I was back a couple of days before I resumed training and my next aim is to qualify for the British field archery team for the World Games next year.

Field archery is extreme archery - there is a course with 24 targets which can be up a cliff, down a cliff, or across a ravine and you shoot three arrows at each target. They are all different sizes and on day one you have to guess how far away they are. On day two, the distances are marked.

I use the same bow as for the target archery, just with lighter arrows - field archery has always been at my heart, I was number one in the world a few years back and I’ve won many medals including a World Games silver and World Team silver and I was also European junior champion.

I was hoping to be given a wildcard into the British team for the World Games as I used to dominate the sport, but they wouldn’t accept me, so I’m training hard and I want to bang in some big scores at the first of two qualifiers next weekend in the north-east and prove a point.

Click here for GB team manager Hilda Gibson’s response.

Alan Wills was talking to BBC Sport’s Peter Scrivener.

It’s been my first Olympics and while I’m disappointed not to get a medal, it’s been a fine line all the way.

Let me start by putting straight what I said after I was knocked out of the archery in the last 16 earlier today.

I was cheesed off with my performance and then went straight into interviews. Sometimes you say stuff in the heat of the moment which you otherwise wouldn’t.

I always said I wanted to compete in the Olympics and finish with a smile on my face and I didn’t do that, but now I’ve been to the gym for an hour, I’ve had time to reflect a bit more.

Our coach Peter Suk has had a lot of time for me and a lot of belief in my ability, although sometimes I want him to be a bit more enthusiastic about me.

But I can’t complain about the support he has given us - and it’s me standing on the line shooting the arrows. We’ll have a review in the weeks after the Olympics, but this has been one huge learning curve for us all.

There’s been a few ups and downs for me personally from the opening qualifying for the team event to beating the Athens Olympic champion in the individual event.

I started off well in the team competition last weekend but one bad dozen on the fourth end left me in 21st place, but it was my best score of the season so far so I was happy with my performance.

There was a tricky crosswind which was difficult to read making things even harder, but to give you some idea of the level of competition, my score was one point better than I shot in my last World Cup meet in France when I placed 12th.

A day of chilling out followed before the elimination rounds started and we lost 214-210 to China.

It was a disappointing finish, but the team has not shot together too many times this year and after a good year last year, there was a lot of expectation on us.

It was a good opportunity for us but it’s a fine line between hitting the gold and slipping into the red.

I had a strange interlude when I went down to cheer on the British women in the individual event. Charlotte Burgess and Naomi Folkard met in the round of 32 and an extra coach was needed to offer moral support and sort out their arrows.

I was asked to help Charlotte out and although I’ve never done anything like it before, I did so.

Charlotte didn’t shoot that well, but it was up to me to try and lift her spirits, as Naomi started to pull away.

Before the last end I just told her to shoot like they were the last arrows she was ever going to shoot in her life - it was a great privilege to be in that position and good experience.

It was then time to focus on my individual event on Wednesday - I only scored 103, but beat Italy’s Mauro Nespoli in the first elimination round.

My score was not as good as team-mates Larry Godfrey and Simon Terry, but they both went out.

I wanted to do better in the next round, not just for myself, but for the whole team.

I faced the reigning Olympic champion Marco Galliazo, also from Italy in the next round and I put in a great performance, but I still needed a 10 from my final arrow to progress.

The adrenaline was really pumping and I just told myself that there was nowhere else the arrow was going, but in the centre gold.

I knew pretty much as soon as it left the bow that it was on target, but it was still a relief to see it go in and I won 110-109.

It was a brilliant feeling to beat the Italian and he told me that I had better go on and win the tournament now.

But then the day was over and I had a day off before going back for the last 16 round.

I was getting into a good rhythm on the Wednesday and I reckon I would have gone much further if the competition had continued.

That’s not the way it works though and I had to come back today where I lost my first match against a Cuban 108-104.

It was hugely disappointing, but you win some and you lose some and I’m 95% sure I’ll be back for London 2012.

First up though is to enjoy the rest of the Olympics, then it’s home for a review with the archery team and then I plan to take a bit of break from the recurve and go back to the field archery and take part in the World Games next year.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, though, to let you know about the rest of my Olympics experience and more on the future.

Alan Wills was talking to BBC Sport’s Peter Scrivener.

Olympic Green Archery Field

A bit like the sailors at currently windless Qingdao, Britain’s medal tally has hit the doldrums over the last couple of days.

There was concern this first week was going to be slow, and to be honest, so it has proved.

Apart from the swimmers, who’ve had a great Olympics, and the cycling team who will undoubtedly be Britain’s biggest providers, there’s been disappointment elsewhere.

Nothing out of judo, diving, badminton, tennis, shooting - and now archery, where I’ve been spending my time over the last few days.

Archery had a target of two medals, and managed only a 4th place in the women’s team event.

Let’s add some context to that.

Last year was a particularly good one for the British archers, winning three medals at the World Championships, but it’s here in Beijing where it really counts, where the fruits of their labours, and the £2.8m investment the sport’s had in the past four years should be reaped.

What’s gone wrong?

Alan Wills offered me an insight straight after bowing out in the last 16 this morning.

He told me the head coach, Peter Suk, wasn’t letting him “be himself” out on the target field.

He wanted to feel more aggression, but felt that his personality was being subdued, because Suk wanted a calmer approach.

Team-mate Simon Terry mentioned “issues around the team” the other day, and clearly that’s what he was alluding to.

I’m left to question why wasn’t this resolved before the games?

If Wills wasn’t getting what he personally needed, then why?

After all he’s the bloke out there drawing the bow.

Whether this is a management or a communication issue, I don’t know, but the net result is a flat team, flat performances and a zero in the medals column.

Team leader, Hilda Gibson, said that there’d be a chance to get all this out into the open at a big de-brief post games.

Fine, but forgive me, too late for Terry, who said he’d not got his head around the one-on-one contests yet, or Naomi Folkard who let nervousness get in the way of her talent.

If ever a sport needed a good psychologist to give them strategies for dealing with those things, it’s archery.

Like target shooting, it’s a sport you play as much against yourself as the person standing next to you.

The Grand National Archery Society has some thinking to do, as do the other sports who’ve missed their medal targets here.

UK Sport has a much publicised “no compromise” policy when it comes to funding sport.

Archery will be among those nervously awaiting the outcome of the divvy-up of cash for London 2012.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with Chris Boardman again, who will be alongside me for all the cycling events in China.

When Chris won his Olympic Gold medal in Barcelona in 1992, it was Britain’s first cycling gold since the tandem event at the Antwerp Games of 1920! (When Brits Harry Ryan and Thomas Lance finished the 2,000m course ahead of a South African duo).

How things have changed, with all the hope, hype and expectation surrounding the team this time round after their nine Track Cycling World Championship golds in March.

Chris’s role was, and still is, key to the development of the sport in the UK and he also inadvertently helped me to establish full coverage of the Tour de France on BBC Radio.

Without his presence on the line in Lille in 1994, I doubt whether BBC bosses would have agreed to send an eager young reporter around France for three weeks.

He won that day - and the coverage was up and running.

Boardman really helped to raise the profile of the sport and he had an excellent working relationship with his coach Peter Keen.

They were a great pairing and Keen was able to transfer his success with Chris to a bigger group when he set up the World Class Performance Plan in 1997.

His vision changed the face of British cycling and when he left to take up a post with UK Sport, a template for success had been laid.

The current team manager Dave Brailsford has refined and added to the early work, leading to unprecedented levels of success.

But I think the new ideas and obviously the victories of Boardman and Keen were crucial in leading to change.

In case you are wondering, Boardman is still involved with the squad. He has a Senior Management position with British Cycling and and is Head of Technical Development, which I imagine he loves.

As you can tell if you read Chris Hoy’s latest blog, all seems well inside the camp as the riders prepare to start tapering off their training down in Newport.

The same thing happens to us commentators you know, my prep’s tapering off about now!

The bulk of the hard work has been done, the notes are printed up and all that’s left is some bag-packing and a last couple of days with the family before the latest adventure begins.

I believe this one has the potential to be rather special.

This weekend, Britain’s Olympic archers will be heading off to Macau to begin final preparations for Beijing.

Alan Wills, Larry Godfrey, Simon Terry, Alison Williamson, Naomi Folkard and Charlotte Burgess will be carrying British hopes of medals in this competition, and I genuinely believe they have prospects, both in the individual events, and certainly in the team tournaments.

They, and the 12 Paralympians who will be heading off later in August, were given a hearty send-off last weekend, with a big barbeque reception, and it was hard not to be excited on their behalf.

Just by qualifying to take part, they have achieved what most of us can only ever dream of.

It was a pleasant evening, enjoyed by all, with the archers looking relaxed and confident, while partners, parents and other family members looked on with great pride.

And isn’t it always interesting what you find out about people and their families at these kinds of events? You know the sort of thing I mean - talents that we never knew existed. On this occasion, credit must go to head coach Peter Suk and his wife, who proved themselves a musical couple of some note.

Peter Suk has done an outstanding job in the past three years and his impact is already making its mark in the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics, with the names Emma Downie and Tom Barber springing immediately to mind.

Both of them are reserves for this Olympics, but both have enormous potential, and - all things being equal - will be starting to make their impact felt over the next few years on the international stage, which they have already trodden with distinction.

Emma only took up archery six years ago, and after her raw and natural talent was spotted early on, Peter Suk has spent much time helping her continual development.

He has also invested much time and effort into the development of Tom, who’s just 16, but a young man who can really make his mark over the next few years.

They are two to look out for in the longer term, but for now the attention is on the immediate future, and Beijing next month.

Nobody underestimates the task at hand, and the competition will be intense - but our archers are well prepared, determined, and confident in their own form and ability.

And hopefully that will be the cue for another pleasant barbeque on the terrace at Lilleshall, this time to raise a glass in celebration.