Archery made its Olympic debut in 1900, but was dropped after the 1908 London Games. It came back in 1972 in Munich.
Archery might not be the most exciting spectator sport, but, thanks to author Suzanne Collins, and her blockbuster Hunger Games trilogy, it is definitely the most fashionable of all the Olympic games.
How hard can it be, I thought. All you have to do is make sure the pointy end of the arrow flies away from you, preferably not hitting any living creature. Hitting a target would be a bonus.
The slight problem was that Typhoon Vicente was busy hitting Hong Kong on the day I was meant to be imitating Katniss Everdeen. It seemed that before I had even started, the odds were not going to be ever in my favour.
Luckily, La Salle has an indoor range. So it was on.
La Salle's team captains Johnson Chan Jor-shing and Kenneth Yip Ching-wa were on hand to train me. There are bows, and then there are bows and then there's this professional competition bow (above) that was so heavy I could barely lift it for more than a few seconds. All that extra shiny stuff is to ease the recoil and help the archer shoot better for longer. Honestly, though, I think the recoil would be the least of my problems if I had to use this. I wonder if anyone thought of having a bow caddy on an archery range.
Luckily, the bow I was to use was not as heavy: I was given a stripped-down version without the bling. But then there was the small matter of which eye I was going to use. I had kind of hoped to use both of them. But that was not to be the case. I had to use my dominant eye, the captains explained. Now, if anyone were to ask me which is my dominant side, I would say without hesitation that it is my right; after all, it's the hand I write with. But as it turned out after a little test, my left eye is the dominant one. So all that mental rehearsal weeks in advance, practising my stance at YP HQ, was for nought because I had to do things back to front.
