CHEYENNE — Nestled in the Wyoming prairies, up a winding road and down a rocky driveway, Jennifer Nichols prepares for the Olympic Games, with two horses giving watch.
Her radar eyes hidden behind sunglasses, the archer clasped her bow, gently pulled the arrow back and then — pfffffft! — shot the arrow like a 3-2 fastball, piercing the bull’s-eye.
Without reaction, Nichols calmly placed a new arrow on her bow and repeated the process — another bull’s-eye. Ho-hum.
She has spent calendars here in her backyard, since 1996, when she picked up the sport of archery as a 12-year-old after receiving a Christmas gift of a bow-and-arrow set.
Same routine. Only now, she’s preparing for the ultimate exam, the Olympic Games in Beijing, where she looks back to the 2004 Games in Athens.
“I’m so comfortable when I’m here in my backyard,” said Nichols, 24. “So that’s a method I use a lot — I’ll put my mind-set back here and picture myself training, when I’m actually competing. It helps me relax.”
Mental focus separates the best in this sport.
“It’s crucial,” said her coach, Alexander Kirillov. “It’s almost like anyone can win (a medal). It’s very easy to lose the focus in the pressure situation. You can be strong physically, technically shooting good shots, but if you lose the focus, that’s it, game over.”
In Beijing, Nichols’ plan is to transport herself back to her backyard, where the only spectators have manes, and it’s so quiet you can hear an arrow drop.
Archery, she explains, is like golf. Sure, golf has a leaderboard, but one golfer cannot physically do anything to disrupt another golfer. Same for archery.
In the Olympic qualification round, Nichols and the other 63 female competitors will shoot 72 arrows. Their scores are ranked 1-64 (1 vs. 64, 2 vs. 63, etc.), and a tournament of head-to-head matches commences, 12 arrows shot by each archer, better scores move on.
“Some people might get psyched up to think about their competitor, but for me, I need to keep it more as a personal competition,” Nichols said. “It’s just you, your bow, the target. That’s the best way to approach it.”
Nichols was home-schooled and still lives at home, though she is on the road half the year for clinics, training and competition. She has taught dance classes and occasionally works for her dad, Brent, who owns a business building security gates, but basically her job has been archery since becoming an adult. She gets support and sponsorships from archery companies, but there’s not much money to be made shooting arrows.
She does it “for the love of the sport,” her dad said.
And so, armed with her “X-Factor” bow from Precision Shooting Equipment, she shoots in the morning and in the evening, squeezing in cardio and weightlifting during the day, six days a week. Mention “robotic” and she accepts it as a compliment.
“What we work on is — same movement, same motion, same thought process,” Nichols said. “Every single shot.”
Her clarity about archery was earned. It evolved in the years after the 2004 Olympics, when her first love suddenly wouldn’t love her back.
As a teenager, archery was a carefree game, a chance to shoot colorful balloons in local competitions, a chance to bond with her four bubbly siblings. But after 2004, archery became a job.
“I struggled with it,” Nichols said, “because when you make it in your career, it kind of takes away the joy of winning. It makes it almost like I have to win. And my focus was the winning, as opposed to enjoying what I did.”
In 2007, her focus nearly malfunctioned. Her coach had tinkered with her shooting form, and it was backfiring. She was having an identity crisis as she pondered whether her self-worth was determined by her archery accomplishments. During the U.S. Olympic Trials in San Diego, she panicked.
“I felt like running away and throwing up,” Nichols said. “I didn’t feel I was shooting well, and I was thinking, ‘Am I done?’ ”
She called in the troops. Family. Friends. And she found comfort in prayer. Nichols wears her cross on her sleeve. She blogs about the Lord. She wears a purity ring, her promise of abstinence before marriage. Bible verses are her medicine.
Family support guided Nichols through her unstable time a year ago. And even now, at the top of her game, she quietly recites verses and proverbs during competition. It brings her home.
It all comes back to her mental focus, which, it seems, is on target.
“I’ve been reprogramming my mind,” Nichols said. “And now I’m at the point where I honestly just enjoy my shooting.”
Benjamin Hochman: 303-954-1294 or bhochman@denverpost.com
