The Long Game: Why 4x Olympian Crispin Dueñas Believes in "Leaving Them Alone"

Interview: Crispin Dueñas

Manisha: Hello Archery Family. It's Manisha of the Archery Parent Podcast, what you need to know to best support your Archer. Today we have Crispin Dueñas, four-time Olympian. Canadian Archer. We are going to talk about specialization, and if you have ever wondered if you are pushing your Archer too soon or if it's okay for them to do other things other than Archery. This episode is for you. Crispin, welcome to the podcast.

Crispin: Glad to finally be here.

Manisha: Yes.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: We've talked before. You actually did a great little segment for the Archery Parent Podcast Instagram, and the question posed to you that day was what suggestion would you tell Archery parents?

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: And I don't know if you recall your answer.

Crispin: I absolutely do.

Manisha: Please share it then.

Crispin: I think I just told the parents just to leave your kids alone and let them experience it and let them grow at it at their pace. And, I mean, pushing them is sometimes it, it feels like sometimes the right thing to do, but most of the times it's probably not the best thing to do.

Leave them alone. That's the general takeaway.

Manisha: That message made its way around the world. I think it's at 32,000 views.

Crispin: Wow.

Manisha: So many mentions. So many great Archers took that message and reposted it. They mentioned it. They shared it. It really, really hit a chord with a lot of people, and you said it. I think a lot of people think it, but I think it was so embraced because somebody finally said it. So thank you for saying that.

Crispin: Yeah, no problem.

Manisha: For those of you who are not familiar with Crispin. How did a bow end up in your hands?

Crispin: A complete luck and accident? I would say I, I got into Archery simply because I was looking for something different to do as a child. My parents had always tried to get me to do as many sports as possible.

I remember quite vividly I was into swimming, karate, gymnastics. Like, all my school sports that I could do soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball, or softball, I think at that time. And, and then I wanted to try something else and something different. So I think one day I asked my mom what it would be like to shoot a gun because she had told me that her, her dad was quite a good marksman with a gun.

And I said, I, I'd want to try that. And my mom said, "No, no, no, no guns" for a 12-year-old or 13-year-old that I was at the time. So I was like, okay, well I'll keep searching for something and one day later on in my grade eight year at school, so I was probably, what is that,12-ish, I mentioned just in passing to my Grade 8 teacher that I wanted to try Archery. He was like, "Oh, really?" And he opened up a drawer on his, in his desk and pulled out a pamphlet to a place called the Archers of Caledon. And he said, here, this is the club that I shoot at and give this a try. And so that's basically just by pure luck, I had mentioned it to my teacher and my teacher just had the resources to get me started in Archery.

So then I started with Saturday morning lessons and, yeah. Decided I really liked it.

Manisha: Are you able or willing to share that name of that teacher that changed the trajectory of your life?

Crispin: He literally did. His name was Chris Constantine. Or, Constantine, depending on how you pronounce it. So he was a teacher at a school called John A. Leslie Public School in Scarborough, Ontario.

After I graduated and went to high school and everything, we kind of lost touch and everything. But yeah, he was literally the person that changed my whole life because of, you know what I do with Archery, and I met my wife through Archery, and I've gone through four Olympics for Archery, and done so many different things around the world.

Who knows what I would've done if I had not said that on that day. It's pretty, pretty crazy.

Manisha: Teachers and the impacts that they have.

Crispin: Teachers. Wow. Goodness.

Manisha: Yes. Right.

Crispin: yeah.

Manisha: You, too, are a teacher. Can you just share what you teach?

Crispin: I am a teacher with the Toronto District School Board. I teach high school, and so that means that any child from the age of 13 to 17, and I teach Math and Physics. Admittedly, these subjects that nobody really likes. I'm right there.

Manisha: When was that moment that you decided that Archery is just a little bit different? That this is maybe my sport that I'm going to pursue at a different level?

Crispin: One of the things that really got to me was the fact that there were no physical limitations.

Those who have seen me in person, actually, know I'm not the tallest person in the world. I'm 5'7" and for a lot of sports, so 170 centimeters, for a lot of sports, that's not tall enough to do anything. In track, for example, I remember some of the track coaches saying that I wasn't tall enough to do lots of what I wanted to be able to do, just because I didn't have the leverage.

For volleyball, I was always the guy in the back digging up spikes. It can get a little bit painful at some times because you're always down, like landing on your knees, and trying to dig the lowest possible dig or ball that you can.

I liked Archery because I didn't have any of those physical limitations. I think that's what really pulled me towards it. And I, I liked the concentration and the kind of almost art of perfection, of doing Archery. And also it was kind of a calming sport for me. You didn't have to really physically exert yourself. When I first started out, I did it because I purely enjoyed it and the enjoyment is what really kept me in the sport. Not the fact that I was just standing around, pulling a bow back, and walking however many meters to go get my arrows and coming back. It was just having fun. Loving it.

Manisha: Was there a certain age that you recall that you decided to turn all of your focus and actually specialize in Archery?

Crispin: Yep. I remember the exact moment and I had just competed at the [2000] Ontario Summer Games with a Compound bow. Our province, we have what's like, almost like a mini Olympics. And so all these sports for anybody who was under the age of, I think 18 at the time, would come together and have their, have an opening ceremonies, have a village type thing.

And you would go off each day and you would do your sport at your venue, and then you would come back to wherever the village was and almost lived the Olympic life. I got silver medal at that first Ontario Summer Games with a compound, and I, said to myself like, “Wow, this is a really cool experience. Is there anything bigger than this that's like this?”

And at that time, Olympics was not on my radar and somebody said, "Oh yeah, the Olympics is pretty much exactly like this". And I said, "Oh, great. I'd love to do this". And then they said, "Well, first you've got to shoot the proper bow". Back then the Recurve was the only bow that was in the Olympics.

That's when I made the switch and said, I want to experience this on a bigger scale with more people and more countries. And I think the experience was what drew me.

Manisha: 2015. The Pan Am Games were in Toronto and you were there. That was actually the moment that my Archer, Reece, decided that he was going to move from Compound to Recurve.

You were on the field...

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: ...with your team and we went to the Qualification one day and we went to the Medal matches. I'm seeing Recurve for the first time. I'm seeing the v-bar and the stabilizers and all this other stuff going on. 70 meters. Oh my gosh. And it was so interesting how mesmerized he was and everybody else who was sitting around us, but I remember distinctly people going:

"That's Crispin." "That's Crispin."

And I'm like: "Who?"

Crispin: "Who?"

Manisha: And, Reece was watching World Archery all the time, and so it was like, oh, I had to learn who you were. I had to learn who Brady was and I had to learn all of these other names, so...

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: ...I feel like it's kind of coming full circle. That was the turning point for us.

And you happen to be part of that. So just connecting that up with you again.

Crispin: I'm glad that it was able to make an impact. I know for a fact I did not have my best competition in 2015 at the Pan Am Games, but being able to not even perform at my best and be able to reach audience members, that's, that's kind of cool. So thanks.

Manisha: Do you think, looking back, that you decided to make the decision to specialize at the right age for you?

Crispin: The 2000 Ontario Summer Games, that's when it changed. Yeah. That I wanted to experience it on a bigger level. What came after that was a - how do I put this? I found that I had a natural ability to do this sport. And also at the same time, I had a really great coach at the time. So Joan McDonald took me through everything that she knew and taught me everything that she, well, actually no, I'm, I'm pretty sure I only know a fraction of what that woman knew, but she was able to open the doors for me and get me down the right path.

But then, all the time, not pushing me to say like, oh, you need to place at this, at least this placing at this tournament, or you need to win this medal, or you need to do this. It was more like, okay, we'll go to this competition and we'll see how it goes.

I qualified for my first Junior World Championships as a Cadet, so that was under 16, in 2002, after I'd only been shooting the Recurve for two years. We went to this competition fully knowing, it was in Nymburk, Czech Republic, fully knowing that I wasn't going to do well. We didn't have any expectations, whatsoever. I was just going to go and we were going to see what happens. And I placed seventh. Overall. No expectation. That's a good thing.

But even after seventh. I don't feel like I had this like, oh, okay, I must win the next thing. It was like, okay, that's really cool. Let's see if we can maintain that or do better or do something kind of like that in my next competition. So then Joan started bringing me to the US Nationals and started doing some more USAT events.

And then by the time 2005, rolled around, I had already been to another Junior World Championships in Lilleshall, England, in 2004. I placed eighth there. So I was pretty happy with that as well. And then in 2005, at the World Championships, now the Senior World Championships in Madrid, I became the first Canadian male Recurve athlete to make the cut of 64 in quite a number of years.

So that really inspired me to really start pushing. It kind of just started coming together in a more, I don't want to say, natural way, but a little bit more of a relaxed, like, let's see what's going to happen kind of way. I was having fun shooting arrows internationally. I was having fun meeting people and all the while I was not a full-time Archer at the time, either. 2000 to 2004, I was in high school and I was doing a full high school load.

I still had a life outside of Archery, which, I believe, is important. I was also working as a lifeguard. I had a part-time job on top of doing school work. And, having a part-time job and doing extracurriculars and doing Archery after school. I really had to learn time-management like no other because I also, by the time I was in grade 12, I wanted to go to university for a degree in Physics.

So being able to juggle all of that while trying to perform at a pretty high level, you can't do that without having good time-management skills. I had to kind of figure it out myself and, and come to the realization that, you know, after school I've got practice tonight. Well, I've got this much homework I need to do. Well, when am I going to do this homework?

That's when I started doing stuff at lunchtime, like getting homework and that type of stuff done at lunch and after school. Maybe if I had to stay back a little bit and not run out the door with all the other kids and try to get home as soon as possible. If I had to stay at school for a bit before my parents got home to be able to drive me to practice, that was how I started to learn the time-management.

And then also started to learn that if I had a bad day on the Archery range, it wasn't the end of the world. Admittedly, later on in my career, that did happen to me. I got really tunnel visioned into it. And it is, I think, something that everybody will experience in their life in going through high level sport.

But at the time it was more like, hey, if I had a bad day on the Archery field, that's okay. I still have all these other things that I need to worry about. So I couldn't let that affect my life outside of Archery.

Manisha: You mentioned having fun. How does having fun, even in high performance, help with competition?

Do you lose the element of fun at some point when you are in the high performance stream?

Crispin: I really hope that people who are in the high performance stream right now are not losing their fun. I think it just keeps things a little bit more lighthearted and just to remind you that, like, it's not the end all and be all of your life.

It certainly feels like that at moments and that's when things can get pretty high pressure and some things can get volatile, but to be able to have that fun and to just be able to be together with your teammates, I think that's a really important aspect of it. Just being able to joke around with someone, you have to be on a certain level with them to be able to do that. And if you're going to be teammates, that's got to be a thing.

I've been there and I've also not been there. Sometimes you just don't want to do that with your teammates and everything. And it's not something I'm proud of, but it's something that I think everybody has to realize and then get over and just say, “Hey, you know what, they're people too”. “They're trying to achieve the same goals. Why don't we actually just smile and do this together?” That's what I've ultimately come down to after 25 years of competing.

Manisha: You are a coach as well. You mentioned that you've got a few Archers that you help.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: What do you see when they start taking things too seriously?

Crispin: They start to really focus on the target, and they stop focusing on what they're doing back here. The, the self-talk starts to change a little bit and their whole demeanour and their body changes. But, I really try to emphasize right from the start that I'm not that serious of a coach.

What I am teaching you is serious stuff, but I'm not going to be out there going, “we must do X, Y, Z”. And you must do it. And if you don't do it, then session's over, go home type thing. Right? It's not one of those things. I try to work with the people that I coach. It's more of a back and forth, like, how do you feel about doing this? Okay, let's try it. If it works, if it doesn't work, we can always move on from there.

It's going to be that give and take of information between me and my athletes. I always want to make sure that they are in it for themselves. And I've had athletes before where their parents would ask me to coach, and I always have a subtly different experience with those Archers versus the Archers who approach me themselves and ask me for a tip or help or anything.

All the Archers that I am helping right now approached me. I want to see that they're interested in just getting better for themselves. Not to please somebody else or to try to achieve somebody else's thoughts on what they can do.

I want them to be in it for them, and that's, I think, one of the biggest, tells right off the start for me that this person, A) will be easy to work with, and B) will be in it for the right reasons and not for somebody else's reasons.

Manisha: What do you tell your Archers if they say, “you know what, I've stopped all my other activities. I am just going to focus on Archery”.

What do you tell them and how do you perceive that statement if they were to say that to you?

Crispin: So that's a tough one. I have to always play that one case by case - somebody stopping everything because they want to do Archery. Well, first of all, how old are they? What's their outside life like and everything?

Some people just need that distraction. Some people need to have more distractions than Archery. So I try to not get that far with the people that I coach. And I always ask them, so how is this other thing that you're doing going?

I have a student right now who I'm coaching, who he loves going on runs. And it's rare that you find an Archer who likes going on runs. So I always ask them, “how's your 5K time going?” “How's your 10K time going?” And just talking about something else as if they are doing it on a regular basis. And so it's not that something has changed. I just want them to continue to do that.

If I can just have that conversation with an Archer that they are doing something outside of Archery, not, "Hey, can you go do this?" But “how is it going?” It's a slightly different way of perceiving the fact that doing just Archery is not the healthiest thing in the world.

Manisha: Hobbies help move the brain from a score-focused sport to a non-score focused love, passion, want to do. How do hobbies play into that?

Crispin: Oh my God, that's a great question. First of all, hobbies keep you well-rounded. And if you can do a hobby that isn't related to Archery and you can take things from that hobby and apply it to Archery, I think you've scored. Right?

You've gotten something where you've taken a skill from somewhere else and were able to apply it to something that you really enjoy doing. So I think that's one of the big things of doing something else. Being able to take the mindset from another hobby and put it into Archery, I think is going to be also a big win for any Archer out there. Because you only ever experience certain things on an Archery field. But then if you go off and you do something else, another sport, and you experience other things from those sports, and you're able to say, "Hey, that actually ties into one of the things I saw on the Archery field" and gives you another perspective on how you can deal with what's going on in the Archery field - how you approach those situations based off of a learned experience somewhere else.

I think that's also a big thing for taking those hobbies, no matter how big or small that hobby is, whether it's a sport, whether it's playing a piano, whether it's doing all these other things, if you can take something from one spot, from Hobby A, and put it into Archery, and Hobby B, and put it in Archery, you're way more well-rounded than somebody who only knows what they're doing on the Archery field, and that's it.

And I have heard coaches say like, no, you must stop this other thing outside of Archery so that you can focus on Archery. I'm just, like, "Why?"

I realize the time commitment and all that stuff and everything, but people can make time for things. So I mean, I find no reason to stop hobbies just because you want to focus more on Archery.

Some people are going to, like, wholeheartedly disagree with me. I believe that it just makes a more well-rounded person in Archery. It can take your mind off the score. It can take your mind off of the hyper-focus that you sometimes get into. And I think a lot of people will hopefully agree with me that when your ultimate goal is only shooting 10s, that's when you actually don't shoot that many 10s.

But when you're able to pull back just a little bit from that hyper-focused, goal-oriented headspace and just enjoy the moment and make it a little bit more free and fun, you've pulled yourself away from the score, but your score goes up, which is kind of a fun little thing.

Manisha: One of the people that would agree with you is author David Epstein, who has written a number of books about sports psychology and during the 2026 Olympics, so just two months ago, he actually made a few posts about the importance of hobbies in the high performance field. And he named a number of athletes, one being Amber Glenn, US figure skater. She does a number of hobbies, but she also does Archery, which is kind of cool.

Crispin: Cool.

Manisha: But David said that he's learning more and more elite athletes who have taken on hobbies of completely opposite to what their sport is because it makes them feel good.

He mentioned one athlete, I think she's a skier. She builds houses.

Crispin: I think I've seen that before.

Manisha: Just for something totally different.

Crispin: Yeah,

Manisha: I love that. Let's talk about this metaphor from his work. He uses the metaphor of a house with multiple rooms, and he says: "if you only live in the sport room, you exhaust yourself."

Does that ring true for you at any point? Does that resonate with you?

Crispin: Yep, absolutely. 100%. If you're only living in your sport world, sometimes you can forget how big of a world there is out there outside of your sport. If you're having a bad day on the Archery range, that carries over into other portions of your life, whether it's in your home life or your school life or your work life or, or anything else. So if you spend most of your time in that Archery room and you don't get to get outside of that room, you now bring all of that, you know, baggage along with you everywhere else you go.

And, I will be also one to say that the amount of good days you have on the Archery range and the amount of bad days are, we would love to say, it's almost 50/50. We'd love to have 90% good days and 10% bad days, but on those days that you do have a bad day, you come off the field and you're just grumpy and grouchy. You carry that with you. You're just not a pleasant person to be around. Right?

Being somebody who can still be personable and approachable off of the Archery range. I don't want to be that person. I have been that person and I've learned from it. But being able to take all of that negative energy that you potentially could have on the Archery range and leave it in that Archery room, like what Epstein is saying, that's a great way to just compartmentalize your life. I had the problems on the Archer Range. Leave them on the Archer Range and go live your life.

If you had a great day on the Archer Range, that's a great way to use that energy and bring it to the other parts of your life. So I'm not saying you should only have a great day on the Archery range and then have a bad day at home, or whatnot.

If you're able to take the more positive energy that you've experienced on the Archery range, bring it out and spread it out to these other rooms in your house, I think that that's a great way to look at that as well. But then in terms of not specializing in just an Archery, and being able to go to other hobbies, once again, if you are having a bad day on the Archery range and you bring it over to your hobbies, it's not going to be a good day.

So being able to have those hobbies and compartmentalize knowing that, you know, I had a bad day. Okay, I'll put it into a box, move it off to the side, and I'm going to go and do my other thing. Or I had a great day. I want to take that energy and I want to just like spread it around and make it a better experience for myself and for other people. I think that that's a great way to be able to almost choose how you want to be off of the Archery range.

Manisha: What would you say to a parent who feels, whether it's accurate or not, who feels that their Archer is falling behind because they think that other people are specializing while their Archer wants to do other things, including spend time with friends.

What do you say to those parents who are afraid that specializing is not happening for their Archer?

Crispin: I can empathize for the fact that you've spent a bunch of money and now your child doesn't want to specialize in that sport. I hate to say it, but it is true. Archery isn't here forever, in anybody. There's lots of exemptions to that statement. Archery is always going to have an end date. If Archery were to stop tomorrow, what would you do?

And it's really interesting to hear the different responses to that. Obviously, I'm not going around quizzing everybody. It has to come up naturally. But I have asked some people on the World Cup circuit, “if Archery stopped tomorrow, what would you do?”

And I think one of the answers that really resonated with me was from, I'm not going to name him out, I asked him: "As a professional Archer, what else do you have?"

And he said "Nothing".

And he said, if I don't do well here, that's not good."

That's not a place that I would love to live in, in my head, knowing that all of my present future is going to be reliant on how I'm doing on the Archery field.

And quite frankly, after my last Olympics, all the funding that I had going into the Olympics was taken away from me. So I literally now faced the question that I was asking people on a more real situation. Archery at the, an international level was now gone. What am I going to do? What can you fall back on? So for me, luckily that was teaching and going into that professional career, but being able to have your backup plan or your, not even a Plan B.

It's just like, we know Archery will come to an end. For some people it's a surprise. For some people they can predict it. But when it inevitably happens, what are you going to do? A kid who is able to be social with their friends. That's a great tool to have because too many kids are, like, reliant on these [holds up cell phone] and don't know how to make friends. So if they're actually making face-to-face contact with other kids, absolutely! Go have a little bit of a social life.

If they're looking at another sport, that's probably a big sign that they've lost the joy in the Archery that once was there and maybe they pushed too hard. Maybe they realized that it wasn't for them. My parents always just tried to keep me in any sport that I wanted to do. Not the ones that they wanted me to do. They were more like "Hey, what do you want to try out this year?" Or, "what do you want to do more of?" And, it was always driven by what my desires were, not what my parents wanted me to do. Obviously, my mom didn't want guns in the house, so she said do Archery, but it was always like, what do you feel like you want to try to accomplish with this?

That's what will drive a kid, because it's their goal, their want. The parents saying, here's a bow. Shoot it. Again, my two cents on that one.

Manisha: There are countries that remove their high performance athletes, put them in a place where they just focus on Archery every single day, sometimes up to six days a week.

They eat with the same people. They train with the same people. Day in, day out for up to two Olympic cycles. What's so interesting about that, when I speak to parents of athletes who are in this great position to be able to focus on just Archery, the thing that they always mention is the delay of their life, potentially eight years, potentially more, that they have removed themselves from the typical life.

Once they retire and come out of those special programs, they are so much further behind a number of their friends that they grew up with. So during those, those two cycles, their friends have benchmarked certain rites of passage, if you will, or different benchmarks that life...

Crispin: Life events.

Manisha: Yeah. Yes. Life events. And they're just now going to postsecondary education. They're just now getting into certain relationships. And they're just now able to go into certain careers. And that's the far spectrum of how specialization can be positive, but also have some significant detriments. So I guess that's more of a statement than a question.

But the hobbies that you have taken up have led you to some really incredible experiences that, as you said, Archery allowed you to be able to do.

Right now, the Artemis II is about to circle around the moon.

Crispin: That's so cool.

Manisha: One of the…one of the people that you have been able to spend time with is Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield.

Crispin: Yeah. Yeah.

Manisha: How did you get to play guitar with Chris Hadfield?

Crispin: I was able to play guitar on stage with Chris Hadfield simply because I knew how to play guitar. When I was younger, I wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument. And so my parents asked me, what do you want to learn how to play? And I said, I want to learn how to play the flute.

And at the time I thought the flute was here [holding hands in front]. I didn't know that the flute was here [holding hands to the side]. So they enrolled me in flute lessons. And that started my love from music and playing it.

So then I learned flute when I was really young, and then piano, and then trumpet in Grade 5, when they ask you to pick an instrument when you're in elementary school. And then when I was in high school, I taught myself how to play guitar and drums. And then at a Canadian Olympic Committee event, several years down the road, one of the survey questions before we got to the event was, do you know how to play a musical instrument?

And I said "yes". At that time, I was fluent in five musical instruments. And then I got a callback and said, okay, so you've indicated that you can play a musical instrument. What can you play? And I told them, and then they said, "would you be adverse to playing guitar on stage?" And I said, "uh, what are we talking about here?”

And they said, well, one of our speakers is Commander Chris Hadfield, and he's looking for a backup guitarist to play with him. And I said, “are you kidding? Absolutely! I would love to play guitar with Chris Hadfield”, which was really cool because then we, you know, we have to, we have to practice. So they put me in touch with Chris Hadfield and I went to his house and we played in his kitchen, which was really fun.

I had to practice a lot because I didn't want to look stupid in front of him. And then we eventually played guitar together on stage at a COC event, just because I knew how to play guitar. If I didn't know how to play guitar, I would've never met Chris Hadfield. I would've never been able to go to his house and ask him interesting Physics questions like if you sneeze in space, is that enough force to push you backward in space after you sneeze? Random things that you can't ask an astronaut.

Manisha: Sorry, what's the answer?

Crispin: He said no.

Manisha: Oh.

Crispin: It’s not enough because before you sneeze, you inhale, so you displace the air that's in front of you and then you sneeze and you replace the air in front of you. That's what he told me. I have never spent any time in zero gravity, so I can't test the statement from Chris Hadfield, but that's what he told me. And I'm going to go with it.

Manisha: We'll go from Canadian royalty to...

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: ...other royalty.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: You also had the chance to, at the time he was Prince Charles, you had the time to actually give a demonstration and speak with King Charles.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: How did that happen?

Crispin: So that was before the Pan Am Games in 2015, and they were breaking ground on some of the sites that were going to be the 2015 venue buildings.

They asked if any athletes would like to come and do this groundbreaking, and I just said, yeah, I would love to. After they confirmed that I was able to go, they said, “by the way, you're going to be meeting Prince Charles”. And I said, “Uh, sorry, say that again?” And so they said, “Yep, can you bring your bow and arrow to come and meet him?” And I said, “Absolutely I can”.

We were in a big warehouse where they were going to be demolishing the warehouse and then rebuilding something in place of that. So I was in there with my bow and arrow. Obviously, I'm one of the athletes with props, so lots of people are looking at all of my equipment.

And then his motorcade pulls up and he gets out. I'm like, “wow, “that is actually Prince Charles”. I was one of the first people he met after coming into the building and I said, "have you ever held an Olympic bow before?" He was like, "Oh yeah, absolutely."

He grabs it in the grip where you're supposed to grab it. Three fingers around the string like you're supposed to do it. And he pulls it right back to anchor. And I was like, this man just pulled my 50+ something bow back to his face and was able to anchor without instruction from me. And he knew not to dry fire my bow. And it was amazing to see that he knew Archery already. Which I guess would make sense given his position. But that was a really cool thing where I was able to meet him.

But one of the other stories about royalty, that not a lot of people do know, but one of the other things that I do is announce for Archery. I've announced at a couple Paralympics, and some World Championships, like Para World Championships. World Cup Finals. But one of the ones that I did announce at was the Invictus Games in Toronto.

We had our Invictus Games competition going on, and I didn't even know it at the time, but Prince Harry walked right past me within arm's length, and I didn't even notice it was him because I was way too involved in getting to know all of the Para Archers and trying to get them to tell their story over the microphone and he just walked right by me.

And there's a picture somewhere out there where I am talking on the microphone and Prince Harry is right in front of me and I didn't even see him.

Manisha: If anybody has that photo, please send it into us. We want to see that. Actually, you bring up your announcing. I interviewed Mark Chavet, who is known as “the Voice” of World Archery. He mentioned that his very first opportunity was with you.

Crispin: It was the 2013 Paris World Cup Final.

Manisha: While you were a competitive Archer, you shared how you love to cycle. You love to cook, you love to run, but what does it do for you? Does it help you reset? Tell us a little bit about why you continue to do different things even throughout your whole highly competitive time with Archery.

Crispin: I like doing other things other than Archery, just to remind myself that there is a world outside of Archery. I remember a point in my life where if I didn't go to the range that day, it felt like a bad day because I wasn't able to get out and shoot my arrows. I know why I felt like that because of where I was in my training cycle and everything, and you're supposed to be getting the arrows in, getting the reps in, getting the training and everything.

But I think once I started to experience that, some days if I don't go to the range, but I do something else that could still benefit my Archery, it's not a wasted day. So that's when the fitness started really, really taking off for me. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I was already known as  a fit person, but I was only fit because of what I was doing in conjunction.

But then when I started doing fitness instead of going to the Archery range, that's when I was like, “hey, the world didn't end. I'm still here. I can still do Archery”. I can still shoot the way I've done before, but now I feel like I'm getting a little bit more out of it than just shooting arrows.

So I think just that realization of Archery, although it is a pretty big part of my life, it isn't my only thing in life. And for a lot of people it takes a while to get to there. But I think it's an important thing to try to realize.

And also for parents as well. If their kid is only wanting to do Archery and it's their want, that's great. But if they're like, oh, I don't feel like going to Archery tonight, but can I go, like, for a ride or could I go do this other thing that's still a productive thing. It's like, yeah, unless we're really training for something hard, and the kids actually enjoying themselves.

If they want to do something, that's way better than you saying, Hey, you must do this. I'm pretty sure, even as a teacher, I know when I tell my kids, you must do this, there's going to be a little bit bit of pushback. But if they want to do something and they've realized it themselves, and then you can help them, guide them towards what should be done in a kinder, gentler way, I think that's what produces a little bit of a more levelheaded, even keeled person. Not even an athlete or Archer, just person.

Manisha: Let's talk about the emotions when it comes to being told to take a break. So our discussion with Crystal Gauvin, friend of yours.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: Long-time Archer in the US. Now coach. She was a two-time World Champion on the World Archery circuit. We talked about one of her Archers, who after the season was done, she told her Archer, you know what? “Take a break.” This Archer was focused only on Archery, did not have any other social time, did not have any other hobbies. This Archer's parents actually called Crystal up one day and said, what did you tell our Archer? She's crying, she's upset. “What did you tell her?” And Crystal said, “I told her to take a break.” Because “she just finished a whole season.”

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: “And she needs to reset.”

Why do you think athletes change emotionally when they are so focused on something and then told to take a break?

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: Where does that emotion come from?

Crispin: I believe that that emotion comes from a sense of now what? Right. I've felt it too. This is why I love having other hobbies because I can do something about it, but if you don't have anything, then you can't do it about it. But I'll talk about that in a second.

Athletes, especially Olympic athletes, you train so much before you go to the Olympics. You get to the Olympics and you perform your heart out, and you do everything that you can to try to do as best as you can. And then after the Olympics, everything's done. And training is done. All the coaches that you work with are dispersed. Like, you usually have your, your coach and your strength conditioning coach, and your sports psychologist. Maybe your nutritionist. Maybe your massage therapist and all that stuff.

And then after the Olympics, everybody goes their own separate ways. And now you're just left alone and not knowing what to do. A lot of athletes will take a break after the Olympics, and that's when kind of almost like a, if you're not ready for it, a depression will sink in.

A lot of athletes when they're really young, like Crystal's athlete, probably had never felt that before.

What I do know is that they need to be able to separate themselves from that environment. You can't train at that intensity for a really, really long period of time.

It comes in waves and eventually this [hand depicting going up a hill] is your Olympics and then this [hand depicting going down a hill] is your post-Olympics, and then this is your World Championship-prep [hand depicting going up a hill], and then this [hand depicting going down a hill] is post-World Championship prep.

And having something to fall back on, to be able to do when you're in that slump of no Archery after the big event, I think that's where having those hobbies to fall back on really becomes important for your mental health. I hate to minimize it, but it's really because there was nothing else to do, right? If you had nothing else to do, then all you can do is sit there and think about how much you really want to go do this Archery thing, but coach said that I should take a break, which is actually a good thing to do.

For the people who don't have that option, one of my suggestions to some of the other Archers that I have dealt with is: if you can't put your bow down, grab a different bow. Like, if you're shooting an Olympic Recurve, how about you take all the sights and stabilizers and all of the stuff off of it. Try Barebow for a bit.

It's really a different way of shooting a bow. It's kind of the same, but at the same time, it's just different enough. This past year I've been dabbling with my Compound a lot, and it was really funny just to see people's reactions when I show up to an Archery competition with a Compound and they're like, “what are you doing?”

I'm like, “well, I'm still shooting”.

It's a different mindset. You're doing it for a different purpose. You might not even take it as seriously as what you did before, but if, if you don't have another hobby that you can fall back on like that, if you can borrow somebody's bow or modify your equipment enough that it's just into a different equipment category, it's now something different.

You're now using a different part of your brain, and I think it's something that could be enjoyable as well. But it comes back to that question: if Archery stopped tomorrow, what are you going to do? That student probably didn't have a straightforward answer.

Manisha: And picking up a Compound for you, how does it change your expectations of what you could possibly do?

Crispin: I have no expectations. It was a fun thing to do. The summer that I decided that I was going to try the compound and just see what I could do, I shot the Buckeye Classic in Ohio, and then was able to borrow a bow from one of the prominent announcers down in the States. His name is Greg White. He does the Lancaster feed and everything.

And so I have his Compound here, still borrowed, but I brought that home from Buckeye and told myself, I just want to see what I can do with this. Is it possible for me to shoot a 700 with this at one of the 720 events at our local competition?

I got all of the form stuff down and it's like, okay, let's just see. And it brought me back to my days back in 2000-2001 of like, let's see what's going to happen. Sure, it'd be cool if I shot a 700, but if I did or if I didn't, what does that change? Well, actually nothing. If I did, great, I did it. If I didn't, well, it wasn't my equipment anyway, so it's all good. Being able to have that, if this, then this, or if that, then, whatever. Right? So, it was probably a little bit more chill than my usual shooting.

Manisha: We, at Lancaster, just this past January, we got the chance to chat a little bit with Justin Huish, two-time gold medalist for the US, and he was talking about how he picked up a Compound bow and is now competing at the, I believe, ASAs down in the US.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: And how different it is. But he finds that that competitiveness is creeping in ever so slightly back again.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: But how he went into it with no expectations at all.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: He still wanted to shoot, but for indoor. He was loving the Compound.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: And he just loved how different it was for his mindset.

Crispin: Yeah. And also the people are different too. I hate to put people into categories again, but it's like, it's a different group of people, right? Obviously they are different people overall. You're not shooting with a person who you shot Recurve with for years now. You're meeting new people and you're experiencing what their tournament experience is like versus what your tournament experience was with a Recurve and vice versa. So it just, it puts you into a different mindset.

Manisha: In a past conversation, you and I were talking about Norway's policy, it's called the “Children's Rights in Sport”. We both were quite interested in it. It is very, very important from a community base, but also longevity and sport-wise that no child before the age of 13 can actually specialize. And the importance is enjoyment, fun, and grassroots. And this also came up during the Winter Olympics because Norway was doing very well and per capita, the number of athletes that they sent forward to the Olympics were doing very well in the medal count.

That is why this policy came forward. It encouraged so many of these athletes to have other interests, specialize later, after the age of 13, make sure that they have basically sports for life.

What are your thoughts on that policy and do you think it would work in larger countries like Canada? And I don't mean from a political standpoint, just to clarify.

Crispin: Yeah. Um, no. I think if you put it into Canada, you're obviously always going to get pushback because there's some people who believe that you should start as young as possible so that the athlete is immersed in it for as long as they possibly can.

Our goal was longevity to be able to compete at the highest level possible, for as long as possible without injury, without regrets, without overstimulating the mind. I have been around long enough to see people come and go in this sport. They arrive in the sport. They shoot at a pretty high level for maybe a cycle and then we don't see them again. We have seen burnout in so many people, young and old, because they come into this and they give it absolutely everything they've got, and then they're done. And, I don't even think they even pick up a bow anymore just because they've just lost all desire to shoot a bow.

I can't even count how many times I've lost desire to shoot simply because we were always looking for the longevity. I've never been injured in this sport. Knock on wood. I've always had that fun.

And if you look at my track record, because once I started reading about the Norway model, I actually did realize I didn't start actually competing in this sport really, really high level, until I was about 14…or 16. No, 16.

I had gone to the little local competitions and stuff like that. Even my first World Championships, my first Junior World Championships at the age of 16, in 2002, Joan was still a little apprehensive about me going, but she wanted to really make sure that she knew that I understood this was for an experience, not for a placing.

And like I said before, I got seventh at that and I think a lot of youth would be like really pushing to try to get to that top eight, whereas I was just there for the experience of doing that. And arguably, I've had one of the longer careers in Archery in Canada or even in the Americas, and I think one of the only other people who's had a career that's almost as long as mine is Brady's.

And Brady, he and I shot our first ever gold medal match together in 2006. 20 years ago. He's still going strong. He's really lucky that he's able to do that, and he's got all the right sponsors and all the right talent and all the right everything to be able to do this for as long as he has, but to be able to see the Archers who have had that longevity was quite few and far between.

Actually, if you look at who those Archers are and when they started competing, it almost falls accidentally into the Norway model. At the last Olympics that I went to, in Tokyo, the oldest Archers that were there, that were the "original" Archers on the Men's Recurve side were myself, Brady, Mr. Furukawa from Japan, and Mauro Nespoli.

And the four of us, we were playing the long game. Basically, because all four of us had been at Olympics together since at least 2008, and all of us were still competing at a high level. And if you look at the first results of when we started all competing internationally, we were all about, 15-ish. I think that getting somebody to compete at a really young age really ups your chances of burnout and just losing interest in that sport and then never wanting to do it again.

And then also once you get into it, taking it as it in a slower fashion, not to just throw somebody right into the deep end and then not seeing them ever again. So taking, for example, a 20-year-old and throwing them into the deep end, and then two years later, not ever seeing them pick up a bow again. I think that's a loss for Archery for that person.

Manisha: One of the fears about these events such as the Youth Olympic Games and the World Archery Youth Championships, sometimes parents actually will push, push, push, push for their Archer to be there, and in a country where the pool is very small, so it's very easy to be a big fish, if you will….

Crispin: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Manisha: Being put into these international events and realizing that the pool is way bigger.

Crispin: Yep.

Manisha: And that they are not the big fish, it is a very, very abrupt realization.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: And sometimes if they're not prepared mentally, things can go very badly. And there have been stories where Archers attend these big events, and get so disenfranchised. They become scared, essentially, to pick up their bow because they realize that it's one thing to be on top at a club in their province, in their nation, but when they are international, they actually aren't that good. It is something that people don't want to talk about, but it is something that needs to be talked about more because forcing an Archer and pushing an Archer to go forward in something when they're not ready can be really bad.

Crispin: Yes.

Manisha: And we also know, kind of tying in with that, there's been a lot of research that has been coming out publicly where people who think that their younger athlete, Archery or other, when they're younger and they've really banged onto the scene, that there's going to be longevity in that. And more and more research is coming out where they're showing that early bloomers actually don't sustain in their sport. But late bloomers, those who take time, have other hobbies, excel at a slower rate, actually are sometimes the longest lasting athletes in their sport.

Is there anything that you can reflect on that you can relate to those two different scenarios?

Crispin: So much. The late bloomer thing, I completely agree. Just you have to also remember that if you take too long, sometimes that might be a discouragement as well, because it's like I'm putting in so much effort and I'm not seeing the results.

But, the big fish in the little pond is now being the small fish in the big pond. Like, Oh, my God. Was that a big realization for me at the time, as well? But Joan did say like, you are one of the best in Canada. But we are not an Archery nation. We are not Korea. We are not the US. We are not…name off any other country that has really good Archery programs. We are not them. So you may think that you're great here, but once you get onto the world scene, it's not the same picture, it's not the same scenario.

So she did also try to get that into my little brain at the time, still little. And, saying that your expectations should be just for the process orientation for this competition.

Like, at my first Junior World Championships, the little fish in the big pond is a big shock for a lot of Archers and a lot of, well, athletes, to be frank. And, that's one of the things that really discourages for sure.

I completely agree with you. But how an Archer is able to come back from having that experience is a pretty important skill to have. Obviously the Archer won't be able to do it themselves. They have to have their support team. Whether it's parents or coach or psychologist. To be able to say, okay, what did we learn from this and what can we apply for the next time? Well, maybe we won't be expecting to win.

Joan was very empirical data with me. She's like, look at your numbers. Look at their numbers. What's the possibilities here? Not that big and the numbers prove it. So let's go for an experience. If you do well, great. If you don't do well, it was expected already.

But if we can make your numbers at home a little bit better, we can start inching our way towards that upper level of those top shooters and year after year after year, you get that experience and you build up your tournament callous and you build up your mental abilities to be able to deal with all of those situations on an international field of play, and suddenly now you're one of the bigger fish in the bigger pond.

That's how that growth really lends itself to longevity.

Manisha: Right before this interview, we talked about the introduction of Run Archery in Cameroon. If you could, is that a sport that you would've taken up?

Crispin: I would do it now. I wouldn't take it up. I would do it now. Oh my gosh. It's, I think it's a great way to basically make an Archery biathlon, because that's basically what it is.

Obviously we're not going to be like the Norwegians and their biathlon skills and their cross country skiing skills, but being able to be that well-rounded of an athlete to be able to do a foot race and be accurate, I think that's just, that's just a really good juxtaposition of two different cardio systems that need to be present, even if you're just an Archer. So like, I want to try this so hard.

Manisha: It would be fun. I used to be a runner. I used to do a lot of trail running. So doing Field and trail running would be such an interesting idea, but you would have to cordon off such a huge area for that.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: The laps for Run Archery, my understanding, is if it's on a track, it's about 400 meters.

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: If it's outside of a track, it can be a 1K loop and then you're coming back.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: How fun would that be? Of course, I'd have to take up Archery.

Crispin: You have to take up Archery, but it almost sounds like CrossFit Archery, like it's, it's literally, yeah. It's either a 400 meter loop or a 1K loop. It will dispel anybody's notions that Archery isn't a physical sport. If somebody can do this, then like, that's a hard thing to be able to do, especially because I think they're still shooting at the regular 18 meters at the indoor 10-ring.

It's hard.

Manisha: Crispin, I have two questions for you...

Crispin: Sure.

Manisha: ...that I always close my episodes out with, but before that I wanted to ask if there was anything else that you wanted to share or anything that we did not cover that you wanted to discuss.

Crispin: I think we discussed so much today and really appreciate that you're opening this up to all the Archery parents who might have questions or even other athletes who may be watching this as well.

You're pulling a lot of good experience from a lot of experienced people, and I think, I hope, that parents are appreciative of what you're doing.

Manisha: Thank you so much. That's very kind of you. I hope so, too. As I said, I wanted to close out with two questions.

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: So they both have to do with travel. You have been around the globe. I don't even know how many times you would be able to….

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: So many times. Yeah. The first question is, what do you never leave home without when you're traveling?

Crispin: A communication device of some sort, whether it's an iPad or a, or my phone or something like that.

When I was going to Archery competitions, though, I never left without waterproof shoes. For shooting, they were actually golf shoes. So golf shoes, like 95% of them are waterproof. And I don't like shooting in wet feet, so I just always made sure I had a pair of waterproof shoes to shoot in.

And if not a pair of waterproof shoes in general, to walk around in.

Manisha: And the second question is, what's your best travel tip for Archers as you were traveling?

Crispin: Oh, I have so many travel tips.

Manisha: Share as many as you want.

Crispin: Always try the local food. Always. Because you never know what's out there. But on the flip side, if the local food doesn't agree with you, be comfortable eating McDonald's because that's pretty constant throughout the entire world.

I love food. Like, I eat when I'm bored. It's a bad habit. And also learn how to sleep anywhere that you can. Because jet lag and traveling and everything, if you can just fall asleep.... My teammates hated me for that one because I would be the guy who was asleep before the door on the airplane was even closed.

Yeah. Being able to eat and sleep is going to be the interesting thing.

Manisha: Those are two great tips. If someone wants to ask you any questions further, is there a way that they can get in touch with you?

Crispin: I have an Instagram. It's @crispin_duenas. I try to answer when I can. Yeah, that's the easiest way to get to me.

Manisha: Great. Thank you Crispin, for taking the time today. We talked about specialization, we talked about hobbies, and the benefits of diversifying your day. I really appreciate you for what you've done for the Canadian community of Archery.

Crispin: Thank you.

Manisha: Over all of these years and inspiring, you know, certain people.

And oh, I also want us to say too, that you're not the only Dueñas that I have interviewed for the Archery Parent Podcast. Lauren was on. I think she was Episode 4. She actually spoke about being a Student-Archer, and like you brought up earlier the importance of time-management and how do you learn that?

Crispin: Mm-hmm.

Manisha: And being okay with taking time to do your schoolwork and, and do your schoolwork well...

Crispin: Yeah.

Manisha: ...because when you are a Student-Archer and post-secondary, that's what you're essentially there for.

And for any parents that want to ask any other questions about this episode or about the Norway model, I'm going to put all those links in the show notes, as well as how you can contact Crispin.

Thank you so much. This is Crispin. I am Manisha, and we're doing this one arrow at a time.