VAN ALTEN: “a fantastic competition format”

What is new for you with this kind of coaching?

The system is totally new. There is a small number of athletes and they shoot individual, team and mixed team. Therefore, there is the floor for tactical choices and we can decide for an athlete to participate in an individual, team and/or a mixed team match. Anyway, this is very interesting.

How do you manage communication?

Many athletes speak English so it’s not an issue. Furthermore, for me there is an athlete from my country and another from Italy (VAN ALTEN is Italy’s new national coach). At the end communication is not a problem at all.

Do you think it will be more difficult for the Asian team?

I don’t know but I think they are managing quite well as I see the Korean coach talking to all of them. No problems at all for them, it appears.

If you had to mention one challenge or one difficult thing to deal with, what would it be?

What could be tricky is the team sequence, because many of the athletes normally have a specific place in their teams. With this format it’s not possible to use their familiar sequence, so we had some practice runs yesterday afternoon and I must say that it’s going pretty well.

There are not real leaders here?

No but many archers are very experienced and there is no real difficult challenge for them to overcome.

Do you see great teammate solidarity, as it is within the national teams?

Yes, and it grows. You notice a bit of distance at the beginning, especially during breakfast and dinner but after some practice they start to talk more to each other and now I feel that there is a good atmosphere being created between Europeans and Asians, which is great.

In your opinion, is this type of competition going to grow in the future?

Yes definitely. Up to now it’s a success and after today I am confident that it will be. It will be a fantastic competition format together, possibly, with the American continent. This already worked for some other sports and I’m sure that it will also work for archery. 

Do you think that the mixed team event can bring more popularity to archery, with the views including it at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games?

I think that for archery this is very important. At the Olympic Games some countries are there without a team, so if you take a man and a woman, you can create a mixed team and give another opportunity to other good athletes to participate as a team, have a new reason to compete, have a new medal to win and have a new reason to train. I really hope that we’ll be able to see this event at the Olympic Games.

World Archery Communication