Thanks Coach! Tim Cuddihy to Ki Sik Lee
Issue: Volume 28 Number 1
Tim Cuddihy calls him ‘Boss’. But it is said with the reverence reserved for one who has earned a teenager’s respect. Ki Sik Lee has been 17-year-old Tim Cuddihy’s archery coach for four years. In that time, with Lee’s help, Cuddihy has morphed from a gangly 13-year-old who ‘had a bit of fun’ on the archery field to an Athens Olympic bronze medallist capable of defeating Korean World and Olympic record holders.
The pair met in January 2001, when Cuddihy was shooting in his first big tournament in New South Wales and Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Head Coach Lee was travelling the country looking for potential scholarship candidates.
Cuddihy remembers being intimidated when the former Korean national champion and national men’s coach approached him.
‘I didn’t think I was any good, but I remember being in awe of how good he was.’
Two months following the meeting, Cuddihy was offered a scholarship. These days, as an AIS scholarship holder, he is no longer intimidated, but is no less in awe of his coach and mentor.
‘At Athens the wind was difficult and had caused a few of the guys some problems. Mr Lee whispered to me that I needed to aim to the left of the red and I did, and the arrow hit the red every time, so after that I just relied on him,’ Cuddihy says. ‘He knows more about the sport than anyone I know.’
It is an unlikely pairing. Yet, the 17-year-old Queensland country boy and the 47-year-old Korean, who has coached an archery gold medallist in every Olympics from 1988 to 2000, have ‘gelled’.
In the first few months of him arriving in Canberra to take up his scholarship, Lee gave Cuddihy’s technique a ‘really big shake up’.
‘When you think about it, you’ve gone from shooting for fun through learning the rough basics and working with a bow that’s too big for you and with club coaches taking you as far as you can, to archery suddenly being your life,’ Cuddihy says.
‘It was a bit tough for the first few months.’ He says that one of his first introductions to Lee’s training techniques was to put aside his bow.
‘Mr Lee gave me one of those big rubber bands, the elastic type, and wanted me to use that instead of my bow. The idea behind it was to make my body work, instead of relying on a rigid structure. It was to help build my muscle memory. Later I would also put a band on top of my bow to help develop strength.’
He laughs when he says he had a few slaps in the face from ricocheting rubber, but ‘never lost an eye’.
But by far the biggest change was the introduction of running to his training regime. ‘I’d never really done any fitness work before, and Mr Lee had the squad running 25 kilometres a week. The first few weeks I struggled, but I realised that it helped me train harder for longer. I had more energy during the day. It also helped me with mental toughness in competition, because if things got tight I would think, well, I’ve done all of this extra running and training so I’ve got to be in a better position.’
The pair treats its time on the archery field as ‘work’, and although they rarely see one another off the field, says Cuddihy, ‘we have played the odd game of golf together’.
The teenager cannot recall having ever had any personal problems that have required his coach’s advice, but he has no doubt that Lee would be happy to help. ‘I remember that he once said to me “A coach’s job is to help you be the best archer in every possible way. If that means you need me to be a brother, a father or a friend, I will be that for you”.’
It also means ignoring Cuddihy from time to time. ‘If you’re training and Mr Lee is ignoring you, then that’s a good day,’ says Cuddihy. ‘He only coaches you when you’re doing something wrong. He believes “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. I think that he really tries to encourage you be your own coach.
‘It makes sense, because when there are six athletes out there in a competition, and he’s down the line saying something to someone and you’ve just shot badly, you should be able to know what you’ve done and fix it yourself. He concentrates on making sure you’ve got good technique and control.’
Having said that, Cuddihy is quick to point out that Lee almost instinctively knows when his athletes are having a problem. ‘I’ve seen him when I’ve been on the field and he’s in his office (overlooking the field at the AIS) and he’s supposed to be working on his computer or something and I’ve had a problem and he’ll be there with his binoculars watching me.
‘Once, I saw him on a mobile phone talking to someone while at a competition. He had his back to the line, but he turned around because he knew that someone was having a problem with their technique just from the sound of the arrow hitting the target.’
Cuddihy says Lee is a very patient coach who never loses his temper or raises his voice. ‘In Italy last year we had kind of set a goal of me finishing in the top 32 in a competition and I finished, I think, 72nd , which was the worst I’ve ever done. It was incredibly bad. All Mr Lee said to me was that I would learn from my mistakes and that I knew what I had done wrong. And he was right.’
But the Korean also knows how to laugh and joke with his charges. At the same competition in Italy, Cuddihy says he and a couple of team-mates, took a telescopic fishing rod and threw a line over a bridge in the middle of town, not knowing that it was illegal. They caught one small fish and had thrown it back when a town official who spoke no English approached them to let them know how unhappy he was with their actions.
‘We couldn’t understand a word, but we worked out what he was trying to say. When we got back to the hotel we confessed to Mr Lee and he laughed until he was crying and just said we needed to be a bit more discreet.’
As for the future, Cuddihy says he cannot imagine ever topping an Olympic medal in what he calls the most ‘cut throat’ sport around. He hardly touched a bow between the end of the Athens Olympics and January this year, but says he will be aiming to get his 37-hour-a-week training commitment back on track to make him competitive for the World Championships, to be held in Madrid in June.
And Ki Sik Lee will be there, hopefully ignoring him. Says Cuddihy, ‘I just want to say thanks for everything, Boss. I couldn’t do it without you.’
