After a nerve-wracking last arrow finish left her one point out of the individual semifinals Sunday, Utah archer Denise Parker had a day off Monday to switch her Olympic focus to the team competition scheduled for Tuesday.
The United States women's team of Parker, Jenny O'Donnell and Sherry Block will be one of 16 countries vying for the gold medal in competition at the Camp de tir amb arc arena in Barcelona. The U.S. team finished fourth in qualification shooting last Friday and Saturday, behind teams from Korea, the Unified Team and China, and will begin play as the No. 4 seed.Parker led the U.S. shooters in the qualification rounds as well as in the match play portion of the tournament that took place on Sunday. While Block was eliminated in the first round of 32 shooters and O'Donnell in the second round of 16, Parker posted consecutive wins over two Turkish archers - Zehra Oktem and Natalia Nasaridze - to move into the quarterfinals.
It appeared Parker would also get past her quarterfinal opponent, Natalia Valeeva of the Unified Team, who, by coincidence of the draw, had eliminated the other Americans, Block and O'Donnell, to make it to the quarters.
The Utahn held a 99-98 lead over Valeeva as they moved into position for the last arrow of their 12-arrow match. Valeeva shot first and scored a nine for a 107 total. Parker needed an eight to tie the match. Either a nine or 10 would advance her into the semifinals - and the chances for that appeared good since she already had five 10's and three 9's among her first 11 arrows.
But she scored only a six, her arrow missing both the inner 9-10 yellow ring and the 7-8 red ring next to it. It didn't land until it found the inside of the 5-6 blue ring.
Valeeva, who did not watch Parker's shot, sighed with relief as the U.S. archer dropped her bow and walked slowly back to the team area.
"I had the match," said Parker. "I just blew it. I knew anything in the gold ring would do. I rushed it. You're so excited to see where your arrow goes, you don't shoot the arrow.
"I felt good. I shot really good. I just had two bad arrows."
Besides the six that closed her scoring, Parker also scored a six on her sixth arrow.
As the first pairing to shoot in the quarterfinals, Parker and Valeeva were the first archers to ever participate in the new Olympic alternating arrow format. It called for the two opponents to stand side by side and each shoot one arrow at a time - in contrast to the previous matches, when arrows were shot simultaneously and all matches in each bracket were held at the same time.
When Parker and Valeeva met for the pioneering event, Parker won the coin flip and, intending to put last-arrow pressure on her opponent, chose to shoot first.
After the first three-arrow end, however, the format switched, with Valeeva shooting first for the next three arrows. Parker was surprised. In her previous experiences with the new match play format - in the Arizona Cup in March and at the U.S. Trials in May - the same archer shot first through all 12 arrows. She was unaware that the international archery federation had recently changed the format.
"I didn't understand that," she said. "If I'd known I'd have chosen (to go) second. I wouldn't have chosen to shoot the last arrow of the match - why put that kind of pressure on yourself?"
But she inadvertantly did put that kind of pressure on herself - and both times when the last arrow of a three-arrow end was hers, she scored a six.
Parker did not use the coin-flip as an alibi, nor did she bring the subject up until asked by reporters. She said she couldn't answer why Dick Tone, the U.S. team's head coach, didn't go over the rule with her beforehand.
Tone said he was surprised that Parker wasn't aware that, by electing to shoot the first arrow of the match she would also shoot the last arrow. "I thought she understood it," he said. But the coaches' reasoning seemed skewed when he explained, "she should have known because that's the way we've always done it."
A check with Jim Easton, president of the federation, verified that was not the case. Easton said the coin flip rule wasn't modified to "alternate who shoots first" until last Apr. 21, and that both of the competitions Parker shot in - Arizona and the U.S. Trials - used the old version.
In any case, Tone said he planned to talk to the U.S. men shooters about coin-flip strategy before their individual finals Monday.
"It could be a factor. We'll make sure we talk about it," he said.
After getting over the shock of her last arrow, Parker, who was 21st individually in the Seoul Olympics and made it to the final eight here, was able to reconcile that the sport's new match play format at least enabled her to get into prime position for a medal.
"Everything was to my advantage if I would have moved on," she said. "The problem is, I just didn't."
Instead, it was Valeeva who joined Koreans Youn-Jeong Cho and Soo-Nyung Kim and China's Xiaozhu Wang in the semifinals. Cho and Kim were the winners over Valeeva and Wang, respectively, and moved on to the all-Korea gold medal match, won by Cho. Valeeva outlasted Wang for the bronze medal.