In the gear-up efforts towards Beijing Olympics, Chinese
athletes committed to training heart and soul. The psychological
promotion seems to lag behind as the archery team
exposed?in?Beijing?at the Olympic archery test
event.
Chinese women team suffered early exit with 212-214 loss to
Britain in the first elimination round at the International Hockey
Tournament on Tuesday.
The hosts, world No. 2, was ranked in the sixth place after
preliminaries, in which they had already betrayed the withering
form.
In the elimination, Chinese archers, the Athens Olympics
silver-taking team, found their forms still intangible. The women's
team coach Lian Guofu deemed that Chinese archers are in trouble
due to nervousness during the competition.
"The archers tried their best but some of the shooting was not
dealt with very well due to their nervousness in fear of losing
their advantage gained at the beginning," said Lian.
"It is a pity we got eliminated at the first round though the
team shot six 10 points," added Lian.
It's not a pity, but a gain if the Chinese team can learn
lessons from the tournament. After all, it's only a run-up to
Olympics. The psychological strength is as important as contesting
skill for victory as testified through numerous examples.
"Cask theory" is quite applicable here for skill-demanding
sports like archery.
Chinese men's team was also less impressive in the preliminaries
on Monday, finishing in eleventh. The men's team coach Guo Meizhen
spelled a similar curse.
"Our men's team did not perform well. All the athletes are under
huge pressure," said Guo. "There is really great pressure on the
Chinese team. The athletes will practise harder hereafter."
"There is still a gap between the Chinese team and the
world-class teams," added Guo.
International Archery Tournament, the Olympic test event, is one
of a series of pre-Olympic test events in the run-up to the Beijing
Olympics.
There are 113 archers from 27 nations and regions taking part in
the "Good Luck Beijing" Olympic archery test slated for Aug.
20-26.
(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2007)