CRISPIN DUENAS
Q How did you get into archery? A I got into my sport simply by mentioning it to my Grade 8 math teacher, and by luck he had a pamphlet to an archery club that he shot at, at the time, and he handed me the pamphlet and said give this a try. That weekend I went out and I signed up for lessons immediately after that and the rest is history.
Q What drives you to compete? A The drive that I have to compete is the fact that my shot is never perfect. I’ve never shot a perfect round and I think every athlete out there is always striving for that perfect day, the perfect game or the perfect round.
Q Who is your biggest inspiration or someone you look up to?
A There are a lot of people who I look up to and I can’t name just one person, but I can name off a certain type of person. The person who has that drive to be excellent at something that they do, whether it’s an athlete or a musician or Chris Hadfield the astronaut, all of these people have something that they had worked hard to achieve and they’ve achieved it. So I can’t say that there’s just one person who does this for me. Everybody who I see and who I can look up to and say that person is a dedicated human being, I look up to them.
Q Archery as a sport has grown in popularity — and I think we can thank The Hunger Games for that. How has that been to watch as somebody who has been an archer for as long as you have?
A I think watching archery in the media is entertaining. It’s supposed to be entertainment, so it is entertaining to me. Like Colonel Hadfield said when he was watching Gravity, that’s not supposed to happen. So for me, when I watch archery in the media, I love the attention that it’s drawing to our sport, I love the fact that after every new archery movie comes out we get an influx of people wanting to register for lessons, but I always tell people that what you see in the movies isn’t necessarily what we actually do.