Canadian archer aims for self-evaluation amid top competition
The Lockdown Knockout offers Crispin Duenas a rare shot at intense self-evaluation, and that has to be as valuable as the first-prize money of 1,000 Swiss francs.
“There is a lot of learning
I can take away from doing this competition,” said the 34-yearold archer from Toronto. “At a normal competition you have this variable and that variable potentially affecting the way you shoot. When I shoot this competition, the only variable I can blame is myself because there is nothing else.
“So it’s a great way to look at how mentally tough and resilient I really am when I’m shooting under pressure and there is literally nothing else that can affect the way I shoot.”
So far so good. Shooting alone in the Peel Archery Club in Brampton, Ont., last week, he topped the Lockdown Knockout recurve seeding round of 60 arrows with a score of 595, two points better than longtime American rival and reigning world champ Brady Ellison.
The elimination rounds are up next and Duenas takes on Bernardo Oliveira of Brazil in the quarter-finals on Tuesday. The match will be livestreamed by World Archery, the international governing body that is trying to keep its athletes busy and fans engaged despite the fact the COVID-19 pandemic has scrubbed the outdoor season and threatens the indoor circuit in the fall.
The Lockdown Knockout is an invitational event pitting four male and four female English-speaking archers in European and American time zones in bracketed competition.
The athletes compete remotely, placing one camera on the target and another on themselves as they shoot and then score their arrows. They are allowed to shoot indoors or outside, from the regulation indoor distance of 18 metres.
“Since I live in the city, I can’t shoot in my back yard,” said Duenas. “I’d have the cops called on me so quickly.”
The June 21 final will pit the top male against the top female. In compound action in May, Sara Lopez of Colombia shot outdoors in the rain and still triumphed in the final over Anders Faugstad of Norway, who shot indoors.
Anything can happen when the pressure is on, and Duenas relishes the chance to keep competing.
“I still have the drive to do this. I have been training for something like this, so there is no reason for me to do this half-assed.”
It’s not his style. He’s a physical fitness devotee and is proud of his mental toughness. He’s also the reigning Pan Am Games recurve champ, has been to three Olympics and is a good bet to make Tokyo his fourth next year. In preparation for what he thought would be a 2020 Games, he invested more time, training and money in the indoor World Series circuit, winning one event and finishing in the top five in two others.
“It’s not unheard of for me to be good on the indoor circuit. I attribute that to the winters we get in Canada. There is a lot of training that has to happen indoors,” he said. “This year I was trying to keep myself in a competitive frame of mind by doing the indoor circuit and going pretty serious at it so I was prepared for the Olympics. This was the most extensive indoor circuit I’ve had.”
When the Tokyo Games were postponed in late March, he shifted gears toward more fitness training and less shooting. And when he was invited to participate in the Lockdown Knockout, he was able to keep his skills sharp at Solely Outdoors, a Toronto-area retail store that has an attached range. The store stayed open during the initial pandemic shutdown, and the owners allowed him to shoot at the range by himself.
“I was very grateful.”
He was able to train there during store hours because the pandemic sidelined his part-time job as a substitute math and physics teacher.
However, when it came time for the Lockdown Knockout competition, he chose the Brampton range for its superior Wi-fi and the fact he’d be all alone. World Athletics opened the competition only to archers who could compete under strict physical distancing protocols.
So he set up his target and two laptops, turned on the radio for some background music and shot 595 to lead the way.
He’s confident headed into the quarter-finals.
“I want to win. There’s no doubt about it. I wouldn’t be competing if I wasn’t in this to win this,” said Duenas, who could convert the first prize into about $1,400 Cdn and second prize into half that.