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.

Now the Olympics are over it is full steam ahead for the Paralympics and the nerves are starting to kick in a bit more.

We headed off to Macau on Saturday for our pre-Games training camp which is an important part of our final preparations and will help us to adjust to the conditions we will experience in Beijing.

It takes a lot of time for me to acclimatise, as it does for a lot of cerebral palsy athletes, so it is nice to get over there early and not feel tired when it comes to the competition.

When we were building up to Athens four years ago we spent some time at a holding camp in Cyprus but it wasn’t for too long because we didn’t have to get used to a time difference.

Going first to Macau and then to Beijing means we will be away from home for about a month and it gives you a good chance to get used to everyone on the team.

For some of the others on the team it will be their first big trip abroad. Some are very young and it will be a new experience for them. I know what I was like when I went to Sydney in 2000. I was 15 and I was used to my mum doing everything and it took me a while to get used to the team set-up.

It helps us that we have a good support team behind us, not only our coaches but also people like our nurse Lynne, who is there when you need a hug!

To be honest, I don’t really like being away for so long, but the hotel in Macau is so nice with lovely big beds and that it makes it easier. When it comes to leaving and going to the athletes’ village, it will be hard to drag myself away from the luxury!

In Macau I’m sharing with another swimmer Rachael Latham. We sometimes train together in Manchester and although Beijing will be her first Games, she will hold her own!

We will then be sharing an apartment in the village with two of our coaches Lars (our head coach) and Billy.

Rachael and I are both a bit messy and I know at home my fiancé Rik despairs of me and is always tidying up behind me, but I prefer to think of it as organised chaos.

My packing went surprisingly well. It doesn’t get better the more often you do it and I always hope I won’t forget anything but Rik flies out to Beijing a week later to take part in the cycling competition so he can always take it over.

We have our team kit, so that’s easy to remember, but I have taken some of my own clothes for our last night party and I also have a couple of pairs of my own shorts and some t-shirts if I have a day off.

My allowance was split between two bags so if one goes missing it isn’t too bad, but I did take some spare underwear and a toothbrush and a hairbrush in my hand luggage in case of emergencies! Last year we went to Macau and five of the team’s suitcases went missing on the Manchester to London leg, so those whose bags weren’t there had to go for a week without clothes.

Over the last couple of weeks all of us on the swimming team have been getting really excited watching the Olympic swimming events at the Water Cube.

For Michael Phelps to win eight golds was amazing, but I didn’t like the fact that the swim programme was changed to suit American television.

I’m not a morning swimmer and I’m glad that our heats will be in the morning and the finals in the evening, which is what we are used to.

Natalie Jones was speaking to Elizabeth Hudson

China showed overall dominance in table tennis event at Beijing Olympic Games, winning eight gold medals. Chinese men and women earlier confirmed their gold in team events. Later on, Chinese women kept hundred percent success rate in singles two days ago. On the last day of Beijing Olympic, it was men’s turn to prove their dominance in men’s singles. Actually, Jorgen Persson from Sweden was not only player outside China in men’s gold medal round, but he was easily outclassed by Wang Liqin in the singles.

China is always a big name in table tennis, but winning eight gold medals in one single Olympic Games has been something special for the Chinese. In fact, this has been the first time a team sweeps eight gold medals in table tennis in the history of Olympic Games.

Related article:

International Herald Tribune

Can two weeks and several bagfuls of gold medals change the way an entire country sees itself?

I’ve written here before that China often sees itself as a victim. Generations have grown up learning about this country’s century of humiliation – how the West and Japan once bit chunks out of China, and how they still want to keep China down.

But does China now have to get a new national story?

The success of the Beijing Olympics may make China reassess its belief that it is a victim. It may also have to re-think its view that the West is determined to stop China from retaking its rightful place as a world power.

Here’s why…

• Everyone has come to Beijing. 205 nations were invited to compete at these Games – and 204 showed up (Brunei managed to get its paperwork in a muddle and failed to register its athletes on time). So, there were no boycotts. The most important world leaders even came to the opening ceremony as well (one of the only ones who didn’t, Gordon Brown, has now arrived in Beijing for the closing ceremony).

• China is winning more golds than anyone else. Before the Games, China played down its gold medal chances – saying that it was just a minor, second-rank, developing country which would probably be annihilated by the sporting powers of the world (and would be lucky to rub two bronzes together, that kind of thing). But, in the end, it’s come out ahead. So, the next time that China plays down its chances, no-one will believe a word.

In the end, it’s pretty hard to carry on feeling like a victim when every country on earth comes to your party and proceeds to watch you win.

“Now we can say goodbye to our image as the sick man of Asia,” said Shen Ming, a Chinese fan watching the final of the women’s beach volleyball told my colleague.

“Hosting the Olympics means that China’s power has grown,” said Hao Ning at the final of the men’s springboard diving (which China won).

On to the next question then. What does China do when it no longer feels picked on by the rest of the world?

Here are the most outlandish fears of the lying-awake-at-night-worrying-about-China club (slightly exaggerated for effect): China will go ahead and conquer the world, raise the red flag over Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, and make the rest of the world come to Beijing every once in a while to prostrate themselves and generally grovel in a humiliating way.

China says that no-one has to worry about anything like that. People here tell me they just want to be respected and taken seriously as equals – nothing more.

What do a billion people do when their country finds its confidence?

The Beijing Olympics was always going to be different from any other recent Olympics.

None of the usual questions that tend to surround an Olympics mattered here: money, organisation, level of government support and the public’s enthusiasm – or indeed lack of it.

Instead, the question China faced was: should a regime like this have the honour of the biggest gathering of people in peaceful sporting competition without agreeing to change its authoritarian ways?

This issue was presented very clearly seven years ago when the International Olympic Committee voted for Beijing.

The leader of the rival Paris bid said China should get the Expo but not the Olympics. China’s human rights record, he argued, ruled it out for the Olympics. Even though he himself was one of many businessmen who believed engagement with China was a good thing, giving it the Olympics was held up as an endorsement the country did not yet deserve.

In ignoring that advice, the IOC took the view that the Olympics simply had to come to the home of nearly a quarter of the world’s population.

True, it nodded in the direction of human rights with its then director general Francois Carrard saying the IOC would monitor human rights in China.

But, as President Jacques Rogge put it to me, while China has had to open up as a result of hosting the Games, it was unrealistic to expect the Games to go where world leaders had failed.

It was always fanciful to expect that this 17-day festival of sport would completely change China, or that China would change a sporting system invented by a French count and now run by a Belgian count. Not in any fundamental ways at least.

Indeed, as Rogge also points out, the IOC came to China for its own reasons related to the Olympics.

It took the decision in the summer of 2001, when both the organisers for the 2004 Athens summer Games and the 2006 Turin Winter Games were suffering seemingly insurmountable problems.

Athens, having messed up its structure, was so behind schedule that there was real fear it might not be ready.

Turin, whose choice as the 2006 Winter Games was an unintended consequence of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, did not have adequate facilities, needed more funding and was not certain the Italian government could or would help.

In contrast China simply told the IOC: “Give us the Games and we will do whatever you want.”

And that is exactly what has happened.

China has given the IOC great venues – there can be nothing more iconic than the Bird’s Nest, a true “object for the world” exactly as Ai Weiwei, its Chinese architect, intended.

The infrastructure development has been amazing, as anyone who has used Beijing’s new airport will testify. The transport plan has also worked, making Beijing’s previously impossible traffic more than manageable.

And the venues have provided some of the most memorable sports seen in many an Olympics.

We had a first week so dominated by Michael Phelps that we had to scurry through the record books to ask if he was a greater Olympian than Carl Lewis or Jesse Owens.

Then Usain Bolt stole the show in the second week, making the 100 metres once again magical and worthy of a race to decide the fastest man on earth.

And alongside all this, Team GB has broken free from the rather depressing British history of failing to deliver by enjoying its best Games for a century. In doing so, athletes have created some truly great sporting moments, which have been surprising and stunning in equal measure.

Many other countries have also had Beijing highlights to treasure. India, the world’s most underachieving sporting nation, won its first ever individual gold, as did Panama and Bahrain, while Mongolia, Afghanistan, Togo, all won their first medals.

The Beijing Olympics will also have an impact on the United States. Since the collapse of the Wall and of the old Soviet Union, its dominance of the Games has not been challenged.

But China will top the gold tally this time round. And that has prompted Americans to ask whether their athletes should get government funding – the US is the only nation that does not provide it.

Indeed, as China and Asia continue to grow as world economic powers, America’s sway over Olympic finances may also come under pressure.

Many in the Olympic movement feel that if the 20th century was Europe and America’s great century of sport, then the 21st century might belong to China and Asia.

While China’s presentation at many of the sporting venues was a pale copy of what you might get in the NBA or at a baseball game, the Chinese have been determined throughout the last two weeks to show they can do sport like the West.

And there can be no doubt that the Beijing Olympics have done just that.