Olympic Gold Medallist Olena Kostevych - Air Pistol Video

[Patrick Haynes]

Hi.

Ukrainian Olena Kostevych, at 19 years of age, claims her first Olympic Gold Medal in Women's Air Pistol at the 2004 Athens' Olympics.

I have some footage and pictures of Olena from the Athens World Cup back in April 2004. Visit the Coaching Section for all of the files.

Good shooting.
Patrick Haynes
TargetShooting Canada

[David Levene]

Does anybody know if there is a story behind Luna Tao's "disaster" in the AP40, or did she just have a bitch of a shoot.

Her failure to even make the final, finishing 38th, is the surprise of the games so far.

[Eddie Tsoi]

Luna Toa has not been in her best shape starting from this year, her performances had been rather unstable as reflected in her world cup appearances.

The team manager has tried to share the preasure by sending the other team members like Chen Y in the Asian Shooting Championships but could not help.

Some Chinese newspaper said she had been diverted from training because of the divorce case.

[Bill Poole]

I painstakingly went thru and read EVERY article about Tao Lu Na I could find in the chinese press.

for months they have been reporting "struggling with poor form".

Coach Xu Hai Feng was quoted repeatedly before the games as saying, "she is steadily improving" etc. But there were also comments about her doing poorly in national tryouts, but no scores reported.

When I met her in February, I wished her luck and expressed the hope she would get two golds in Athens (this was after Milan but before Kuala Lampur, Thailand and every other WC she failed to medal in this year). She said something to the effect that it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, just as long as you play, or just getting to the olympics is an accomplishment. I think she knew even then she would not win a medal this year.

Mutual Friend in Hong Kong emailed me after the match that she has been very tired lately.

News reports after the match reported that she went running off to the athletes restroom in tears.

Other post-match reports seemed to blame the distraction of having taken up with a new boyfriend (former HS classmate) this year..... there was NO mention of this in pre-match reports (the divorce was years ago, and I knew about that). Interviews reported the next day seemed to indicate she plans to become a full-time housewife (I can't read Chinese as well as I can speak it, so I'm reading these in machine translation so its kinda hard to be certain exactly what it says)

Xu HaiFeng seemed also to be disappointed or angry based on the reports and suggested she will completely stay away from shooting for 2 years and start over.

Father and relatives quoted said "we'll be back in 2008"

On a message board in chinese, there were some very nasty comments, like "we don't need athletes like you!" but the supportive fans posted a lot more nice things.

I will email her in a week or two, but I honestly don't expect the reply to contain anything of substance, nor will I ask about the poor performance. I'll ask my Hong Kong mutual friends more next time I'm there, but my company is cutting travel expenses again, so that might not be till after the 2008 olympics, if ever.....

So....

that's everything her biggest fan can remember....




Poole
http://arizona.rifleshooting.com/tln-feb04a.jpg

PS on the machine translation, her name translates to "Elegant Jade"

[GOVTMODEL]

Patrick,

I had difficulty with that video, can you verify the link and the file type?

[pilkguns]

Wow Bill, good info. but what really amazes me is that you find reading Chinese more difficult than speaking. As someone who has been learning the language for about a year, its the very opposite, one character means one thing, whearas speaking, with the four tones it could be anything.

[Bill Poole]

http://2004.sina.com.cn/cn/sh/2004-08-19/102077216.html

Eastern Sports Daily reports a Mr Huang met her at the airport with flowers and talk of a proposal....

lucky him - zhu ni men kuai le

Poole

[Guest]

Patrick,

I had difficulty with that video, can you verify the link and the file type?

I have problems downloadin ANY of the videos in the coaching section. Any suggestions?

[guest]

Hi I had the same problem downloading the video's. Just go and download the newer version of real player and you'll be fine.

[kiko]

Wooau, Bill. Beautiful report.
News and press releases of shooting stars?. press conferences, reports and information about them?

What world is that? certainly it's not here in the USA.
regards, Kiko.

[Patrick]

Hi folks.

For the streaming video to work, you do need Real One Player. That being said, I am considering opening them up for people to download and view from their own PCs. I am concerned about bandwidth and may try it out for a week or two, and try to gauge the impact.

Let me know what you think: downloadable or streaming (as is)?

Good shooting.
Patrick

[GOVTMODEL]

download

[petaton]

Dear Mr. Haynes:

Your site is very extensive and have lots of useful info but It seems that have some death links. I can't see or download any file of the "video Theater"section. We would appreccite if You solve this problem,

Saludos,

Victor

[David Levene]

Your site is very extensive and have lots of useful info but It seems that have some death links. I can't see or download any file of the "video Theater"section. We would appreccite if You solve this problem,

There is nothing wrong with the Video Theater links, they seem to be working perfectly.

As Patrick has said before, you MUST have the player from www.real.com (free) to allow you to see the streaming video.

It is not the fault of Patrick's site, you just need to get the right software.

(Note to Patrick, my vote is for download, IMHO Real sucks)

[Patrick]

The nice thing about Real is that it allows compression and streaming. I wasn't too sure if I wanted to let the video out into the wild (hence streaming.) I'm becoming less concerned about that now.

As for Real versus MPEG or AVI: if I create a file with the same current quality, the file is huge. Making the file about the same size, and the AVI/MPEG become uselessly fuzzy. Only other option then is to make the file short, and that has little value.

For now, I'll stick with Real Media. I'll create a file for download tonight and people can tell me what they think of it.

Patrick

[dsingh]

Partick ,

try Xvid - that is probably the best comrpession algo available yet. It does go back to the fact that you need a player that supports it. But exceptionally good open source players exist. Mplayer and BSplayer to name two.

http://www.xvid.org
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html
http://www.bsplayer.org/

[Guest]

For the streaming video to work, you do need Real One Player. Good shooting.
Patrick

Hi Patrick,

I just downloaded Real Player v10.5. I'm still not able to play any of the videos. I'm getting the standard "page not found" error message. Do I need Real One specifically or should Real Player v10.5 work? What ports does rtsp use? Maybe my firewall is blocking it.

Don P
Hawthorne Calif

[Another Guest]

I had the same problem. I copied the URL and changed "rstp" to "http". Real Player was able to open it directly. Don't ask me to explain it.

[PaulB]

Did anyone record the Women's Air Pistol finals? It would seem to have been one of the most exciting ever, with three ties. Any possibility of this being made available in some format (respecting copyright rules)?

[Patrick Haynes]

Hello.

Due to increased demand, I have set all of the files in the TargetShooting Canada Video Theatre for download, as opposed to streaming video.

You will still need to have RealOne Player installed on your system to view the footage. I have neither the time, nor the interest in recreating the files into another format.

Patrick Haynes
TargetShooting Canada