MY grandfather, a farmer, had hands so strong and fingers so thick that when my father taught him how to drive, he snapped off the gear lever while they were driving along the A6 before asking, mildly, what he should do next.
I mention this because one of the reasons for this strength and fingers so wide (to this day, grandfather’s wedding ring dwarfs any other I have ever seen) is that he attributed the size of his fingers to the milking by hand of over 40 cows a day.
In grandfather’s case, the fingers on both hands were excessively large. In Simon Needham’s case, only the fingers on his right hand are larger and stronger than those on his left. Why? Because the UK’s No 1 recurve archer, who has been to the Olympics, who has been part of the British archery team for the last 11 years and who trains up to eight hours a day, draws back the string on his 68-inch bow up to 300 times a day, with the equivalent weight of 44 lb on those fingers every time he releases the arrow.
Simon told me this after he had spent time training our Jersey archers at the Farmer’s Field, and although he would deny being obsessed with the sport, he said: ‘I just want to see how far I can progress, how good I can become.’
I have no doubt at all that a psychologist would decide that his is an obsessive personality – though not, I hasten to add, in a nasty way. For Simon, whose wife Lana also spends up to 55 hours a week immersed in coaching archery, is a thoroughly affable and warm-hearted guy. He loves his sport and has done so for something approaching 40 years, ever since his grandmother gave him a children’s bow and arrow set which she picked up from a night out at bingo all those years ago.
Such is Simon’s desire to maintain his standards in archery that even his work is secondary to it. He spends 18 hours a week as a school technician so that he can put in the hours he needs to fulfil his next ambition, which is to be part of the British Olympics team in London in 2012.
However, as he admits himself, he could not have progressed so far, nor have taken part in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, without the support of the Marines, which he joined when he was a much younger man.
‘If you join any of the services and you’re good at sport, they’ll give you every assistance they can,’ he said. In his case, while stationed in Scotland they gave him as much time as they could – up to 40 hours a week – for Olympic training, and I know that if he had been good at any other sport in any other of the services, they would have found him the same kind of practice time.
The services are brilliant for that. Why, they even allowed him to stay in the Marines for an extra six months when he should have retired, simply because they didn’t want anything, like job hunting, to distract him before he represented Great Britain (and the Marines) in the 2000 Olympics.
If you ask Simon why he continues to compete, he says: ‘It’s a bit like golf. Every now and then you fire a perfect arrow, in the same way that a golfer plays the perfect shot. When that happens, it is one of the best feelings ever.’
It was interesting that both he and Lana could actually remember that best ever arrow they had shot (in Lana’s case it was in Athens in the European championships).
All of which sent me away that afternoon to consider the best golfing shot I have ever played (actually, it was on a course in Corowa, New South Wales) and the best try I ever scored (playing for Jersey United Banks against a visiting UK side, circa 1979).
I wonder how many other sportsmen or women have one similar, all-embracing moment. I bet there are many out there who have either one or a choice of three or four moments in their lives when they achieved a moment of perfection. If so, and if you can describe that occasion, I would love to hear from you.
Article posted on 5th September, 2008 - 2.55pm
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