Archery, the gold of three unexpected heroes with arrows

Three men with bows and arrows. That sounds like an old story from mythology or any of the several heroes attached to that gear. “The archery? People in Spain don’t even know what sport is, they associate it Robin Hood, the movies…”, he explained. Juan Carlos Holgado (Cáceres, 04-16-1968), member of the trident with Antonio Vazquez (Aller, Asturias, 01-26-1961) and Alfonso Menendez (05-31-1966), has never been on the podium of any major competition. Before launching, they nailed the god’s worst arrow Cupidthat of indifference.

“The following day’s medal selections appeared in the newspapers. I got to archery with one of them and it said: “nothing”. Demolition Man!” recalled Holgado. But they went to launch another one of Cupid’s arrows, the golden one, the one of love to make everyone fall in love. With that gold in the final against Finland on August 4, 1992, they went up Vall d’Hebron to Olympus, where he had risen Antonio Rebollo as a Spanish goalkeeper par excellence.

The last crush, that of Antonio Vázquez, a cold-blooded more than a sensitive to haste: an arrow, a second to throw, impact on yellow and 9 winning points for a final score of 238 to 236. “Nerves? I didn’t look at the clock or the scoreboard, I was just paying attention to what I had to do, people cheered but I didn’t hear anything, I did the very important sophrological work with Mariano Espinosa Explain. “Rebollo’s thing was really difficult at the inauguration, he shot an arrow. If he fell before reaching the cauldron with all the people there…I would have messed up!” specificity of Asturian. “In January, the sponsor withdrew his sponsorship due to the lack of results. They missed it”, added Vázquez with a mischievous smile.

“Yes, no one is counting on us. Our only goal was to get through to the first round against Denmark, but we were there. I think after that first round we set ourselves free because of being among the first eight we got the scholarship for next year and that is one of the keys. Besides, we know how to play with the wind”, he points out. Alfonso Menendez, current manager of the Santa Olaya Swimming Club in Gijón. And, with so many crushes, people fell in love with that trio in the end they broke the news. So much sudden love that Antonio, ideal celebrity ‘look’ with his abundant and revolutionized Afro hairhe was scared.

“I was very reserved and I felt overwhelmed, we had gone from being anonymous to having a popularity of soccer players. When I arrived in my hometown in Asturias, it took me almost an hour to walk the 200 meters between my house and the hairdresser because people were entertaining me. When I finally got to the salon, I told the barber to remove all that hair, I wanted to be invisible. He hesitated, but eventually he did. On departure, It only took me a minute to get home the same way!” Antonio Vázquez, now a coach at the Catalan Archery Federation and monitor for the Olesa de Montserrat club, laughs in explanation.

That divine history has something more than human, coming from the whole of 250,000 arrows rolled out for two years at the rate of 600 or 700 a day under the roughness and brutality of the uncompromising Ukrainian Soviet system. Victor Sydoruk, a coach in his fifties back from everything, a former colonel in the USSR Army, and archery world champion in 1968 after leaving Greco-Roman wrestling due to a knee injury. Also focuses on theories of Charles Darwin.

“The three of us who stayed to go to the Games because pure natural selection, because we were the only ones who didn’t get injured, those training sessions were very hard, some days we had three sessions, there was a third night after dinner. I think there is a day slam 16 houses because he said they have no value,” explained Vázquez. A frequent curmudgeon, Sydoruk had no qualms about expressing his anger when he felt it, as an anecdote by Holgado illustrates.

“I wanted to go to a regional championship in Madrid and Victor wouldn’t let me, but I went. When it was over, he held me to his chest and we almost whispered. The next day he gave me double training for being disobedient and for a while we had a kind of ‘cold war’, he was harder than me. He had a hard time getting used to our culture, he didn’t understand that he couldn’t use the facility at that time because it was busy and, he was so obsessed that, when he arrived in Spain, one day he kicked a stone. in anger because of this, he broke his toe and he was in plaster for a month. But that discipline is what won us, in the first months there was moment of tension between him and the three of us because of the fatigue that caused us to be away from our family and our different characters, but we overcame it”, said Holgado, now sports director of International University Sports Federation.

“Another good anecdote happened in the pool. Swimming was part of our physical preparation but Antonio didn’t know how to swim. He told Victor and he said: “Come, I’ll teach you.” Do you know what he did ? He threw him into the water! Alfonso and I quickly went to teach him. Sydoruk’s method is survival,” explained Holgado, the son of Spaniards who was born in Germany but moved at age 9 to Caceres.

But, above all, the feeling towards Sydoruk was always one of gratitude, and, especially now, no cruelty, but only tenderness towards him. “He is a spare and dry person but we fit in with him. I am very happy to remember the medal today because Victor is Ukrainian and we know the situation that is happeningbut luckily it’s ok. My relationship with him is very close, he is in my marriage”, highlights, with a broken voice, Alfonso Menéndez, about Sydoruk, now president of the Ukrainian Archery Federation in his 84 years old. “He has an amazing energy”, highlights Holgado.

Denmark was buried in the first round and therefore the file was fulfilled, the favorite for gold is waiting to lick his lips United Team, name in which Russia and the other countries of the USSR, except the Baltics, compete after the disintegration of the Soviet empire. Perhaps, although the die had already been cast with the rich work accumulated, Holgado, Vázquez and Menéndez heard whispering in their minds the patriotic outburst of Sydoruk.

“He already told us in the first year: “With the Russians you can’t lose. If not, punishment sessions”. It’s a personal thing for him, we can lose against any team except Russia. In Barcelona he didn’t say anything to us, but he was very happy”, explained Juan Carlos with a laugh. In the semifinals the Spanish trident fired United Kingdom and, in the final, in Finland, where, according to Menéndez, “We know how to play with the wind”.

“A lot of things are explained by our medal, the scores we made are not surprising, this is what we scored in training. I think our main strength is that, as we have three different characters, we complement each other, the good of one is offset by the flaw of the other. I’m more extroverted, Antonio and Alfonso are introverted, somewhere in between. Besides, competing while one threw, one looked at the score and one assessed the wind, that is innovative. There is no team that can adapt to all circumstances like us”, highlights Holgado.

And Vázquez, Menéndez and Holgado took the gold forged between hard training, combining different characters, concentration… and avoidance. “We sleep in Olympic village, but we only ate, trained and slept in Barcelona. We don’t live the atmosphere of the villa, Victor had us very controlled, he said that the villa was for sleeping and that’s it. There is a statistic that says some on the fifth or sixth day of the Games 10 condoms every athlete. Someone would have used 20 because we didn’t see any!” Juan Carlos Holgado exclaimed between laughs.

Although they did not see AphroditeThey shot Cupid’s golden arrow of love. “In Spain, people realize that archery is a sport and it has Olympic medalists on top of it,” concluded Holgado, one of the three unexpected heroes of the Spanish archery team. the best chance of Barcelona ’92.

Good time for archery

“With people like Miguel Alvariño, if we are close to another Olympic medal, it is now”

The Spanish archery team in Barcelona ’92 remained an isolated entity with no continuity over time. Behind them, who did not return to the podium of a major competition, partly due to cuts in ADO plan, almost no more joys. Those Games remain Spain’s only Olympic medal in the sport and the silver at the 1997 World Cup of Victoria (Canada) by Jose Ignacio Catalan, Juan B. Sancho and Antonio Cerra it remains the only metal in a World Championship.

However, today stands, above all, the figure of the Galician Miguel Alvarino, who in June became the European champion in recurve archery and climbed to number 1 in the world ranking. In the same competition, Daniel Castro, also, Galician is fourth. Spain also took silver for the teams with Alvariño, Castro and the man from Burgos Paul AchaAlvariño’s successor in the individual event when he won the continental title in 2021. Successes are growing from below, and the Spanish delegation was brought four medals of the last Junior World Cup.

Elijah’s expense He works well as a national coach and makes a name for himself, Miguel Alvariño worked with him and in the last European Championship achieved good results. We have goalkeepers who can strike at any time, if we are close to another Olympic medal now”, highlights Anthony Vazquez very involved in Spanish archery as coach of the Catalan Federation.