Archery coach Jae-hyung outlines three-pronged approach to turn fortunes around

Coach Lee Jae-hyung is ready to ring the changes after archery’s failure at the Rio Olympics.

And the long-serving Korean coach has embarked on a three-step approach to strengthen the national team. Firstly, he will build a new team. He has maintained the four regulars – Khairul Anuar Mohamed, Haziq Kamaruddin, Atiq Bazil Bakri and Ikram Joni – who are under the Podium programme and will finalise the squad by end of the year.

In Rio, national No. 1 Khairul and Haziq were early round casualties in the individual event and also crashed out early in the team challenge.

“For now, I have nine men and five women. I will be including a few more new faces,” said Jaehyung after a training session yesterday.

Secondly, he will start choosing suitable competitions for his archers with the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games in mind.

“The qualifying tournament for the Tokyo Games will be held in Denmark in 2019. The qualifier falls during the cold weather.

“I’m looking at sending them for more tournaments during winter so that they will get used to the climate,” he said.

“In fact, they will be training in South Korea next week. It is winter over there right now.”

And the third thing is Jae-hyung has a psychologist to work with.

“We have a new psychologist and we are also looking at other sport science approach with the help from the NSI (National Sports Institute).”

The coach said he is happy that several issues that had affected the team’s preparations for the Rio Games had been settled.

“There were many outside interference but all that is over now. We are focused on our challenge for the next Olympics.”

The archers’ first international outing will be at the opening leg of the Asean circuit in Myanmar in January.