In the women’s individual competition, a new star emerged in Ki Bo Bae, whose career had peaked at the perfect moment. She was the favourite to win, although the apple cart was almost upset by Aida Roman in one of the great women’s Olympic finals.
“It was great to see the brilliant new talents emerging at the time and to see a new strong archery nation of Mexico establish itself to challenge the ever-successful Korea team,” said Marsh. The individual silver and bronze medals for Aida Roman and Mariana Avitia would change the entire sport in their country and eventually see Mexico becoming a major archery nation. (You can read more about their story here and here).
The Korean women’s team, of course, fulfilled their inevitable destiny and became champions for the seventh consecutive time – although they fended off a furious challenge from China in the final. Bo Bae would go on to become the biggest star of the era, returning at Rio 2016 to take team gold and indvidual bronze.
Indeed, all four gold medal finals: men’s team, women’s team, men’s individual and women’s individual were notable thrillers: making history or turning on dramatic final arrows.
There was one memory for Marsh which proved to be a little bit problematic for the company producing the TV footage from Lord’s: another well-publicised incident where Khatuna Lorig shot out a camera embedded in the centre of the target.
“I recall the Olympic Broadcasting Service not being very happy that she shot the TV camera embedded in the target during her bronze medal match against Avitia,” explained Marsh.
“They needed to get more spare camera lenses pretty sharpish in time for the men’s finals the next day, as they originally only had stock of four replacement camera lenses for archery but these were also all shot in the first two days of the competition.”
So many memories, but as usual, it would not have been possible without one set of people, according to Marsh. “The Games Makers (volunteers) made the London 2012 Games,” he said.
“I will forever be grateful to all of them. Working at London was an absolute honour – and I would do it all again.”
