|
By Mike Oakley
Sports Editor
April 18, 2004
Every day, the beat of anticipation in Joy Fahrenkrog’s heart harmonizes perfectly
with the countdown clock inside her car.
It flashes the days, hours and minutes left until the 2004 Summer Olympics begin in August
in Athens, Greece - a place Fahrenkrog longs to be when the Games return to their historic birthsite. The clock is but one
reminder of her athletic quest, and the imitation Olympic gold medal dangling from her rear-view mirror serves as equal parts
inspiration and guiding beacon for a journey that began on the shoals of a transformed dream.
It was a year and a half ago that Fahrenkrog, a former DCHS student and resident of Castle
Pines, reached a fateful crossroads in her life. For years as a rower, she envisioned any Olympic dream would be achieved
on the waters of Greece.
It wasn’t that Fahrenkrog thought her trip to Athens would be a lock. But spending
the past five or six years in rowing as a specialist in lightweight women’s doubles, waking up to an alarm’s call
well before dawn and training as much as her schedule would allow would at least offer the opportunity to perhaps represent
her country one day.
The International Olympic Committee detoured those plans abruptly in late 2002 during
contemplation over reducing the number of athletes at the 2004 Games. One of the sports on the potential chopping block was
lightweight rowing. It was a harrowing time for Fahrenkrog and other athletes who faced the prospect of losing their Olympic
shot.
“One of the reasons you get up at 5 a.m. is you think you might make it,”
Fahrenkrog said.
She wasn’t about to let the dream die there, though. After the shock wore off, she
turned her attention to other Olympic sports and compiled a list.
“I took a list of the sports and analyzed it - which one could I pick up?”
she said.
Her list narrowed to three options - cycling, fencing and archery. Living in Boston at
the time, she ruled out cycling due to the often-treacherous Massachusetts weather. She also crossed off fencing, since it
would require a move to New York City to seek out the training the sport would demand.
As a teenager, this might have been a don’t-give-it-a-second-thought proposition.
But at the age of 23, it’s tough for an aspiring Olympic athlete to change course in mid-stream. Fahrenkrog chose archery.
“There was something in archery that just worked for me,” she said. “I
immediately loved it.”
As fate would have it two months later and after she made her decision, lightweight rowing
survived the IOC’s axe.
Archery was slow-going at first. She made inquiries about getting into the sport, and
had to juggle it with a full-time job. For the first couple of months, she was able to devote maybe one or two outings a week
to archery.
“I had a job that I really liked and was kind of torn,” she said. “I
talked to my boss and told him I was really interested in this, and he said ‘If you’re going to do it, do it all
the way.’”
A reminder of personal tragedy helped ease her mind about delving into archery full time.
Her father, John, had passed away in March 2002.
“My mom (Judy) said ‘Life is short. We found out the hard way,’”
Fahrenkrog said.
In December 2002, Fahrenkrog undertook her Olympic dream as a full-time occupation. It
helped that she had sought out advice from Anthony Belletini, the president of the State Archery Association of Massachusetts.
He got Fahrenkrog in an archery class, set her up with equipment and guided her during the early stages of her archery career.
“He was extremely helpful in setting me up,” she said.
She trains anywhere from five to eight hours a day, and eventually moved her training
base to Florida to take advantage of the weather and competition opportunities. A year ago, she was ranked 60th in the country.
Today, she’s in the top five overall.
Fahrenkrog has ascended to an elite level in archery in a short period of time. She placed
third at the World Indoor Archery Festival in Las Vegas, took fifth at the U.S. Indoor Nationals in Andover, Mass., and placed
eighth at the Arizona Cup in Phoenix. This weekend, she’s competing in the Texas Shootout in College Station - the second-to-last
major event she has before the U.S. Olympic Trials in June in Mason, Ohio.
Fahrenkrog attended DCHS her ninth grade through 11th grade years, then spent her senior
year at a boarding school in New Hampshire. During high school, she was also a foreign exchange student in France. After that,
she attended Skidmore College in New York and also lived for a year in England, where she attended the London School of Economics.
In England, she competed in the Women’s Henley, a prestigious regatta. Up until
now, that’s her most lasting sports memory.
“I’d spent five years in rowing and I got to the same level in archery in
less than a year,” she said.
If she finds a way to Athens, she can point to her own dedication and the help of people
who have been to the Games before. She’s now coached by Vic Wunderle, a silver and bronze medalist at the Sydney Olympics.
The Trials loom as the testing ground for Fahrenkrog’s dream, although she’s
young enough to make a go of it at future Olympics if she doesn’t qualify this year. Only the top three archers at the
Trials will represent the U.S. this summer.
“It would be awesome,” she said. “I’ve worked so hard for this
and dedicated myself. Having the support of all my sponsors has really helped. I get e-mails every day from my sponsors telling
me I can do it.”
The Trials are a five-day event. During the first day, each archer must shoot 144 arrows
and then are ranked according to score. The field is eventually reduced to the top 16, and each archer competes in a 12-arrow
match against every competitor. The competitor list is dropped to the top eight, where each archer faces the others in a two-match,12-arrows-per-match
round-robin format to determine the Olympic team.
Fahrenkrog shoots from a distance of 70 meters (or just over 76 yards) to the target using
non-compound bows. Spying the target’s rings from that far away is “like shooting at a dime the length of a football
field,” Fahrenkrog said.
For someone aiming at a dream more than 5,800 miles away, the bull’s-eye can seem
so near yet so far away.
(To learn more about Joy Fahrenkrog and her quest for the 2004 Olympics, visit her Web
site at www.aim4athens.com. Sponsorship information is available, and sponsors receive Aim4Athens T-shirts along with updates
on Fahrenkrog’s progress.) | 
