So I went to Copenhagen. I wasn’t going to miss that. It’s a beautiful city.

The camera worked. World Archery were kind enough to let me in with the real photographers. I got some shots I really liked, and some I thought would have been great if only I had four-grand’s worth of full-frame camera and glass, and knew just a little bit more about what I was doing. Still, onwards and upwards. I was in the right place for this sequence, anyway. I also got to see the Holmegaard bow, the oldest extant bow in existence, about which more will follow at a later date.

I was originally intending to make a podcast based around the world championships, but after a lengthy parade of technical disasters, I’ve decided not to. The Zoom H2n recorder I bought sounded good and worked pretty well until it didn’t, which was at every crucial opportunity: refusing to save files, batteries draining off despite a claimed 20hr battery life, and featuring terrible handling noise for a hand-held object. (I’m sending it back). A lot of interviews I recorded on the field were marred by too-loud background music, a planned meeting at the museum had to be abandoned after the curator was unavailable, athletes I was hoping to get some words out of stormed off in a fury… on it went. Some of it was my fault, some of it was bad luck, some of it was just dumb and frustrating. I also could only be in Copenhagen for the last four days of the worlds, and I realised a bit too late that to do a really proper job I would need to be there the whole week.

I have always tried to produce (or select) the absolute best content that I can for this blog, and after getting home and reviewing all the audio from the weekend I decided it just wasn’t good enough to do something with. This was despite the American archer Ariel Gibilaro going the absolute extra mile and making a handful of on-the-road recordings for me in the weeks leading up to the championships. She took the time, and I’m annoyed that I can’t follow through with it for her. I will have another try at this next year once I’ve got some more practice with live audio in, and hopefully I can incorporate some of the material that did work into something else.

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Back to the sport: the finals weekend stayed dry and bright after some seriously apocalyptic weather earlier in the week, and recurve Sunday brought an almost unparalleled display of Korean dominance. During the week the great white sharks had had to fight some serious battles, but on the big day no-one seemed to be able to bring a game to them, and Sunday did lack a bit of drama compared to the much-harder-to-call compound finals on Saturday. Kim Woojin joined the elite list of double world champions, and didn’t seem all that bothered. But no-one begrudged Ki Bo Bae fighting off the visible stress and nerves to complete what must be the archery equivalent of a career grand slam. She didn’t give a perfect performance, but she gave a fighting one, and it was enough. Afterwards, she said she was just about managing not to cry. That changed when she got to the podium.

Watch the finals here: team and individual. All the WA news roundups here. There’s some more photos on the Facebook page. 

There was an ironic moment after the ladies team matches, when the Korean ladies and their coaches sat down in a row of empty seats in the athletes section of the crowd and got insistently moved on by a officious volunteer because “these seats are reserved for VIPs”. :-/

After the team events, I took some photographs from the cloisters at the warm-up range behind Christiansborg Palace shortly before the individual finals. This turned out to be a good idea: I could get shots from a great angle and slightly above the shooting line, the afternoon light was starting to look good, and it was all business. No one spoke, just the sound of arrows being launched. You could sense the tension in the faces, the sense of importance, the fear.

Bye bye, Copenhagen. You were great.

See the rest of my pictures from Copenhagen 2015 here and here. 

Thanks to Chris Wells, and a ridiculously long list of charming people I finally got to meet. Thank you!