No coach, no problem: China’s LI Jiaman Youth Olympic Champion

The gold medal match didn’t go quite as smoothly as some of LI Jiaman’s other contests. She was inconsistent through the first half, shooting a six in the second end.

Going into the last regulation set, the Chinese athlete was 5-3 set points down to France’s Melanie GAUBIL – and needing a win to stay alive in the match. She rose to the occasion: and shot three beautiful 10s. It forced a tiebreaker shoot-off for gold.

Nanjing 2014 21-26 August
Youth Olympic Games

NEWS | RESULTS 
SCOREBOARD | PHOTOS
Fri 22 Aug Ranking round
Sat 23 Aug Eliminations
Sun 24 Aug Mixed team finals

Mon 25 Aug Girls finals
Tues 26 Aug Boys finals

See full schedule

“I was so nervous, sweating all over,” said LI. She knew her parents, family and much of the Games’ host country was watching her after the gold medal she collected in the mixed team event yesterday.

Jiaman’s coach is HE Ying, individual silver medallist in the women’s archery event at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. Ying also won team silver at Athens 2004 and competed at the Sydney Games.

Ying was not accredited for these Youth Olympics, due to a cap on the number of coaches the China team could have as host country. But she and Li knew that this would be a problem well in advance – so they developed a system of hand signals so they could communicate while the coach watched from the stands.

In the finals event, though – no hand signals came from the spectator area. “I had to calm her down,” said LI. “I gave her the sign to say ‘don’t worry, I can do it’!”

LI did it, in style.

A fourth 10 in four arrows secured the Chinese archer the title of Youth Olympic Champion on home soil.

It was a repeat of the last time an Olympics was hosted in China. There, ZHANG Juanjuan won the women’s individual gold. She sent Jiaman a message of support yesterday night.

“I can’t believe an Olympic Champion was behind me… that’s really unbelievable,” said LI. An Olympic Champion via video message, and a two-time Olympic silver medallist in the stands: not a bad support staff.

GAUBIL was happy with her silver medal. “I was never thinking about being in the Youth Olympics,” she said. “I was just shooting – but this competition is really big.”

The bronze medal went to Korea's LEE Eun Gyeong, who set a world record during qualification earlier in the week. LEE said she was worried during the semifinals, but confident for her bronze final.

“It’s a little disappointing not to take gold after such a good ranking round,” she said. “But it’s made me hungry to shoot at a full Olympics.”

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