| 2008 Olympic Trials Atlanta, September 28 |
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| Atlanta was beautiful, the weather turned out nice even though it threatened thunderstorms. It was a little windy which made things more interesting. The archery field was set up in a soccer area so the grass was thick and green and wet. The venue was very professional with signs and scoreboards and an opening ceremony with a color guard and the national anthem followed by the olympic theme music . . . all very fun and exciting. | |||||||||||
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| At 7AM there's still a low fog over the field. | |||||||||||
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| Anna practiced all day on Thursday. | |||||||||||
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| Friday, September 28, and the official start of the Olympic Trials for a place on the US Olympic Archery Team. | |||||||||||
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| The Olympic Trials are shot at 70 meters. You have 4 minutes to shoot 6 arrows. Then you walk down to the targets and write down the scores. You come back and shoot 6 more arrows and walk down and score. Each 6 arrows is called an End. Each Round is 6 Ends of 6 arrows for a total of 36 arrows. There's a short break of about 15 minutes between the first and second Round. After the second Round there is a break for lunch, about an hour, and then the final two Rounds. You shoot 72 arrows in the morning, have lunch, and then shoot 72 more arrows. The top 16 archers then move on to a Round Robin tournament where they shoot one on one against each of the other 15 archers. This puts them in a final ranking which determines who they'll shoot against in the second Olympic Trial Tournament held next April. That will cut the field to 8 archers. Those 8 will go to the third Olympic Trial in June which will determine the top three archers for the US Olympic Team. |
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| Anna was shooting really well for the first two Rounds. On this board, after 4 Ends (24 arrows shot), she is tied for 12th to 15th place. At lunchtime after the morning two Rounds (72 arrows), she was in 16th place with a score of 578. The top 16 archers make the cut to go on to the Round Robin and the second Olympic Trials tournament. We were excited. | |||||||||||
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| At the end of the day, though, she couldn't keep up the pace. She shot a respectable 527 in the afternoon 2 Rounds, but that put her in 25th place with a total score of 1105 in the final standings.
It was a great experience to shoot with the best archers in the US and who knows . . . |
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