23 January 2012 - Denise VAN LAMOEN (CHI): "I hope that my medal will have an impact on the development of archery in Chile"

Denise VAN LAMOEN (CHI): "I hope that my medal will have an impact on the development of archery in Chile" Lausanne – 23 January 2012   To everyone's surprise, the 31-year-old Chilean archer Denisse VAN LAMOEN became the new world champion this July in Turin. Before the championships, she was only ranked 68th in the world. We met Denisse in Ogden where she was competing at the World Cup stage 3.   Of Dutch origin, VAN LAMOEN was born in Arica, Chile but spent much of her childhood in the city of Iquique. She started archery at 13 and has been competing at international level since she was 17 (1996). That year, she won the Junior Pan American Games held in Mexico, and in 1999 she was second at the Pan American Games (senior) in Winnipeg, Canada.   Denisse VAN LAMOEN took part in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, but she was defeated in the first round, finishing 54th.   After a break of two years to study, VAN LAMOEN returned to competition in 2009, beating four Chilean records. In the World Championships 2011 held in Turin, she achieved a historical gold medal for Chile, which also won an Olympic spot for her country for London 2012.   Her recent victory at the World championships in Turin (Italy) put her on the international scene. Ranked 36th after qualification in Turin, the Chilean lady had a difficult first elimination round, beating Helena FERNANDEZ (ESP/77) after a shoot-off (6-5). Her second round match was much easier with a 7-3 win over Dobromira DANAILOVA (BUL/84). In 1/16 elimination VAN LAMOEN upset the No. 4 seed LE Chieh-Ying (TPE/4), 6-2. She then made her way through the 1/8 round beating another higher ranked competitor 7-3, Khatuna LORIG (USA/20), who took part in four Olympic Games and ranked 5th in Beijing 2008!   In the quarterfinal Denisse VAN LAMOEN faced the experienced Khatuna NARIMANIDZE (GEO/12) for another upset, 6-0. Facing the 2008 European champion Berengere SCHUH (FRA/16) in the semifinal, the Chilean had another 6-2 win to ensure at least the silver medal. However, against another Georgian archer, Kristine ESEBUA (GEO/39), VAN LAMOEN did not miss a golden opportunity to become world champion, with a sixth victory in a row (6-2)!   Hi Denisse! Congratulations for your world title. What does it represent for you? First I thought that I realised my dream, but I can say now that it is much more than that. Every athlete dreams to win one time the World championships or the Olympic Games, those are the two most important competitions. At least I succeeded in one of them, I can almost die peacefully (laughs).   How do you explain your victory? It has not been easy, because I come from a country with limited economic resources. Archery is not very well known in Chile. I benefit now from a nice support, but the technical work frame at the coach level was not very good until recently. Starting one month before the Worlds, our team began to be coached by Martin FREDERIK, who was previously in charge of the German team. His arrival in Chile is a long story, I am under the impression that it was the icing on the cake. Starting last year, I had a good programme to prepare physically in order to be able to support a significant number of training arrows. I have been involved in archery since I was 18 years old, but I before this I had never had a good coach to give me the physical training. I started working with Christian MEDINA, a Chilean professor of physical education and international archer who was in charge of my physical preparation. Thanks to him, I was ready for the time when Martin came to Chile and we accomplished the technical work efficiently. In the end, those technical details are very important at this level of archery.   What are your goals for the future? Before the World Championships, I was considering retiring from sports by the end of 2011, after the Panamerican Games [where VAN LAMOEN lost by a narrow margin in quarterfinals to the future gold medallist from Mexico Alejandra VALENCIA 5-6 (28-25, 25-27, 26-26, 26-25, 26-27, 8-9)]. I am currently in University and I must prepare for a very important exam to get a degree as a lawyer. Because of the lack of a very good coach in Chile, I was considering to retiring. And in came Martin who encouraged me to pursue my career. I explained to him that I had to continue my studies at the University until I get my degree, etc. The most important for us, at the World Championships, was to get a quota place to the Olympic Games, and I told Martin that we shall see what I will do after that. In the end, not only did I win the Olympic qualification, but also the World Championships. The work that we did the previous month was so intense, so detailed, that it gave me a good feeling of confidence and I felt that I could defy the very strong archers on the archery field.   What do you study? I study law. I finished all the classes and I got a degree. I still have to take one more exam to be licensed as an attorney. It is going to take 7 months of preparation, and, as the system requires it in Chile, I will have to work for 6 months for the government. I do not know when I am going to quit archery and dedicate my time to this exam. I have to take the test within 3 years of getting the degree; that will bring us to the end of 2012. The problem is that I cannot prepare the test before the Olympic Games, because it would mean that I would have to quit archery. So I have to make a choice, either the Olympic Games or the license to be a lawyer. Now that I have won the World Championship, the University, that has always supported me by being flexible with me to combine studies and archery, may give me a delay of one more year after the Games to take the test of the bar association. Whether it is my studies or the sport, I have the constant support of my family, my parents that are wonderful, my older brother and his children, my boyfriend, they all support me always. That is what is the most important.   During the World Championships, what was your frame of mind during the elimination matches and the finals? Everything was very clear for me. Every athlete wants to win, but if you think about it too much, sometimes it can disrupt you and take you out of focus. I believe that the results are the rewards of the work and not of what you hope to get. I wanted to go far in the elimination rounds, but the main issue was to focus on what I was doing, round after round, on the archery field. I was in constant contact with my coach. The only way to succeed was to work on each and every detail that he was showing me. Mistakes happened, the most important reaction is to overcome them. For example, during the FITA Round I shot a Miss, because I forgot to change the sight. I was furious, I tried to channel all this anger to turn it into a better concentration to compensate for this mistake. I ended up with a total of 327 points, which was a new record for Chile, in spite of this arrow out of the target. So I was able to catch up very nicely. I was very focused all the time and I was feeling increasing tension during the elimination rounds. I have always been very nervous in competition. I have always wondered what kind of feelings the world and the Olympic champions have. Do they feel the same things I do feel? The same nervousness? I thought they did not, that they had better control of themselves, better control than I had of myself. I always believed that they were above this. All the archers are nervous on the shooting line. Maybe some are less than others, I am always very nervous. There is a big struggle inside, it’s the fear of winning or losing. We try to conceal it so that no one can see it. This year, I have finally accepted my nervousness, it is part of the competition and I have to deal with it. If somebody notices it, so be it. I try to have the best possible control over my body. I do not want to let my fear control me, I want to control my fear.   What triggered this new approach? I work with a sport psychologist, who is actually my boyfriend. We have worked together for a very short period of time. We started shortly before Martin came to Chile. Before that I worked with another psychologist, but I put an end to that relationship. I did not know what to do because there are very few sports psychologists in Chile. My boyfriend has worked with the tennis player Fernando GONZALEZ, among others. I was scared to work with him and had doubts, because we are a couple. We decided to give it a try and to abandon if it did not work. And it worked in a wonderful way. I admire him a lot, I very much enjoy working with him. Moreover Martin gave me a high level of confidence. He has all the required experience and I can finally rely on someone that knows all my needs. All what he teaches me comes from his knowledge and his extensive experience. Before, I knew sometimes more than the coach and I was feeling kind of lonely. I do not criticise the help that I got from Christian MEDINA, it came on a different level, on the physical level. Thanks to his preparation, I can go through a training session of 350 arrows without any problem and compete without getting tired, I can shoot in any weather condition, etc. From a technical viewpoint, the confidence level that Martin gave me is something that I did not have before.   In Turin, you did not have to face any Korean archer on your way to the gold medal. Do you think that this could have played a part in your victory? Unfortunately I have never played against a Korean, I have always dreamed about it but there was no Korean in my part of the board in Turin. However, competing against an archer like Berengere SCHUH puts me through tremendous pressure, because she is one of the best archers in the world. Frankly speaking, during the competition I did not think about who my opponent was, I was only focusing on my shooting. I always wanted to meet a Korean, because they almost never make any mistake, there is more pressure to avoid mistakes. That was my frame of mind while in Turin, to aim for perfection at each shot and not make any mistakes. But I did make one, I shot a 6 against a Georgian archer. Who knows, maybe it would have been unforgivable against a Korean. Given my frame of mind at the time, the identity of my opponent did not matter much. My most difficult match was the one against Berengere. The archer from Chinese Taipei LE Chieh-Ying was also a very tough competitor, she shot more than 1350 points in the FITA Round, and it is the first archer that I faced the second day of the eliminations. Anyway, I still have hopes to shoot against a Korean archer one day.   Was the shortage of coaches in Chile the reason why you spent some time in France at the National Training Centre (INSEP)? Yes, I went to France in 2000. I had qualified for the Olympic Games in Sydney, but there was no coach in Chile that was able to train me at the level I had reached. There was no qualified coach either in the neighbouring countries. Archery was not developed at that time in South America. Furthermore, I needed to compete against foreign archers. I do not remember quite well how I ended up in France. I trained at the INSEP for 7 months. I was trained mainly by Marc DELLENBACH, who was in charge of the junior archers, Berengere SCHUH was part of this youth squad at the time (Denisse VAN LAMOEN defeated Berengere, who was also trained by Marc DELLENBACH, at this year’s Worlds in the semifinal!) Marc took me under his wing and took really good care of me. He prepared a training programme for me. I could not train with the coach of the adult section, Patrick LEBEAU, because I was going to be confronted by his team during the Olympic Games. So I worked with Marc who is a very good coach and a wonderful person. He was among the first people to congratulate me when I won the gold in Turin. I was so happy because he is someone who I counted on in a difficult time in my life, I was 19 years old and I had left everything to move to a foreign country where I did not know anyone and I did not speak the language. When I won my title in Turin, I felt an infinite gratitude. I remembered all the people like Marc, that helped me during the 18 years of my career, through the good times and the bad.   What was the impact of your title in your country, knowing that it was the first world gold medal for Chile in recurve archery? The impact was relatively important, but it is hard for me to assess because I spent very little time in Chile during the month that followed the World Championships. Not only is this the first time that Chile has won a gold medal in recurve archery, but also in an Olympic or women’s discipline. Chile won its last four medals in archery in the 1950’s and 1960’s in disciplines that were not Olympic. That makes the impact of my title even more important. The press went out of control, every one wanted an exclusive interview. I thought that the media attention was going to drive me crazy. I had to pursue training because there were more competitions down the line. I decided, for my peace of mind to give a press conference in Santiago, for all the Chilean media, and this was it. In spite of that, journalists were constantly soliciting me, and I had very little time to dedicate to them, because I must train and travel to competitions. I would like to say yes to everyone, but the day has only 24 hours. I hope that overall my medal will have an impact on the development of archery in Chile. I have now all the necessary support for the future, but I hope that the impact will be towards more support for the young ones. I will soon retire from sports and we need people to take over, to gather a stronger team and to build on the work that has been done by Martin. Now, our women’s team was well managed for the Panamerican Games, but there are only two women behind me, and this is not enough. Sophia MORAGA is 21 years old, and Muriel DESCHAMPS 23, they are young. On the men’s side, the youngest archer is Christian MEDINA at 43 years old. For now, the Chilean archers are shooting well, but in a few years they will have to be replaced by younger archers. I hope that my medal will trigger actions in that direction.   Vanahé ANTILLE World Archery Communication