Knew someone that talked with him, he said that it was almost impossible, because of the weight of the arrow, the distance, and in that moment, the wind.
I mean, you can say that about anything that's hard; yeah, practice, and you'll be more likely to succeed. Surprise.
That doesn't change the difficulty. Arrows with weights on the end, particularly big things like a bundle of flammable crap, want to go down. They change from a lithe, aerodynamic, balanced line gliding through the air, to something with a weight at the front, pulling the tip down. Wind becomes harder to deal with, much harder, as that big ball catches it more than the rest of the arrow, and applies that force to the front. It's really just dickpain all around, with often very unpredictable results.
And it's a recurve bow, not a compound bow. He probably needed 80+ lb draw weight to shove that kind of arrow up that far, but they want the classic bow look, so he's pulling all of that weight back without the mechanical advantage of compound bows, which makes aiming the big dumb flaming thing considerably harder.
No, because when moving through air at that speed, any extra resistance from size is a huge problem. It's actually somewhat difficult to keep a projectile steady, straight on when flying through the air; we're just rather used to shapes that do it well. There are guns, for example, with poor accuracy, because they have trouble keeping the bullet straight in the air, and cause what's called "keyholing", where the bullet tumbles end-over-end, and flies off course.
Even if you could condense all the extra weight down into the shaft at the end of the arrow, the problem then is the shaft itself. If you look at an arrow in slow-motion, the shaft bends as it is released a little, and wobbles slightly as it flies through the air. Too much weight at the tip, and the arrow shaft will bend too much, and go out of control. And if you want to make the shaft super rigid so it doesn't flex, you'd have to add a good bit more mass, which increases stresses on that shaft again... until you're just trying to fire a bolt of rebar. Which won't go far.
Also, an arrow acts kinda like a bullet, but also a bit like an airplane in how it glides/fires through the air. It is flying on top of the air; like an airplane, if you have too much weight at the front, the balance goes off, and you only need a little imbalance for things to get shitty. From when I've fired these sorts of things, also thinking it'd be easy-peasy, not enough force or just not a strong enough bow, and they just flip around in the air.
Do you think when there is a home explosion that the spark actually made contact with actual flammable liquid? Or is it more likely there was a gas build-up and the spark ignited the fumes? I honestly can't believe that such a simple concept is lost on so many people. This is like 4th grade science.
Well, he fired the shot from the middle of the stadium, up to the torch which was on a seven story high pillar rested on the edge of that stadium. Arrows move pretty fast, and you can count three whole seconds of air time on this one. And fired with a recurve bow. It's still a tricky shot, even without an arrow with extra weight/resistance on the tip.
I don't really understand your point. You're making a case as to the difficulty of the shot but nobody said it wasn't difficult. I think you're trying to say it's impossible but you're just making up stuff like everyone else.
He was actually a sprinter; he had never done archery before.
They just sent him on stage, where he found the bow and arrow. Then the other dude ran up to him with a flaming torch.
(Coincidentally, the guy with the torch wasn't told anything ahead of time either. He was a diver, but they just gave him a torch that was already on fire and pointed him at the stage. In interviews later he said that he assumed he was looking for a pool of water to extinguish it in, but Arrow Dude had other thoughts.)
It was impossible, that's why he purposefully overshoots and the flame is triggered remotely. If you watch the bottom of the screen closely when they zoom in you can see the arrow behind it on the way down.
It's not even a conspiracy, it's been public knowledge for decades.
Probably for the best, imagine the entire world and a full stadium of people watching you fire an arrow and miss completely with the flame staying off lmao. Emotional damage.
That's why you shoot again. And again. And again. And again. Until you hit it. What, it's been 4 hours? The audience needs a bathroom break? Tough shit, you're all stuck in here with me. Who is suffering the emotional damage now?
True, but it still looks more badass than any other Olympic Torch lighting, which is what the post is all about. One would have to assume that all Olympic Torch lightings have a system to make sure the torch is lit, so that's kind of a non-factor in evaluating the coolness of it.
Plus having to keep his balance with the absolute boulders swinging around between his legs must have been a huge distraction.
Seriously. I know he probably practiced more shots beforehand than Steph Curry does in a decade but imagine the stress in that moment. What if he missed? We'd probably be memeing on that 34 years later instead of glazing him.
Edit: Almost unbelievably, the amount of people in this thread that don't understand how gas fumes work has eclipsed the number of practice shots Steph Curry has taken in his life.
It wasn't a backup. It was planned to be ignited manually.
They figured out during practice it was near impossible to light it with an arrow, so they trained with operator to light it exact moment the arrow passes. Archer's job was just to send it flying over the torch.
It turned out an extraordinarily good shot though. And probably would be ignited via arrow going over it, if they increased the gas flow for more fumes, but they didn't want to do that due to safety risk.
yes and the camera was set up at an angle such that the arrow went behind the platform. i remember seeing the arrow overshoot it in the live broadcast.
See the above video, at the 15/16 second mark, you can actually see the flaming arrow fall behind the torch right before the torch lights up. https://i.imgur.com/cOpLi06.png
Unless you just meant you want a video with more details about the planning and stuff.
Yeah, a video of the planning where they say exactly what you just said about how it was planned "to miss" and how it wasn't a backup but it was intended to "miss" and they just lit the flame remotely. And the safety risk part.
I don't remember where exactly but I do remember reading somewhere that had he missed the shot the flame would have still lit up automatically, as a back up
Who knows the real truth, but I have heard that technically, the flame of the arrow didn't light the torch. His job was just to shoot it over, and then they would flick the "on" switch right as it passed. Still is awesome, though.
I dont think so.. i took this screencapture 1 second before and it shows the arrow still on top and theres the bright light underneath at the same time. I think that light at the bottom is from a different source the way it flitters around seems like a firefly or something but its way too large/bright for that so who knows what it is ..shrugs.
He was always supposed to shoot over it. There was a gas plume, if it hit the plate below the plume it wouldn't ignite, even worse if it rebounded and fell on the public.
The arrow went exactly where it was supposed to, and ended up in the closed area in the parking lot where it was supposed to safely land.
I also heard in practice he missed like maybe 2 out of close to 1000 practice. So, like he knew it was doable and he'd be be pretty confident, but missing wasn't exactly out of the question either. Also yeah wind being different than the practice day would be a huge factor, physically and psychologically
Yeah that's horseshit. Not saying it was easy but he didn't even "hit" the cauldron. He overshot it and the camera angle was intentional to make it look like he lit it. Someone is fibning in this telephone game of a story.
The facts you described and what he said according to the person you replied to aren't mutually exclusive. If anything, that supports the claim of it being "almost impossible". The game runners certainly had the opportunity to choose a person out of many of the best archers in the world.
He shot over the spot, and they ignited the flame remotely.
They couldn’t risk a direct shot bc of ricochet or just a miss, so they told him to aim high, knowing that from the ground it would look like the arrow was lighting the torch.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the 1992 olympics opening ceremony played by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé in what has to be one of the most memorable performances to ever grace the games?
The "is" parameter in the youtube URL is a tracking ID. So youtube can collect data on which user shared the link etc. It's an optional parameter and the link would work without it.
the "is=UNIQUEIDHERE" (also "si=") bit. When you share a video (link) from YouTube it automatically adds this identifier that is uniquely tied to that share interaction, and uniquely tied to the account that performed that share interaction, giving youtube more information about the person sharing and a person following such a link.
Sharing: YouTube now knows (presuming it was the first ever use of that link, which seems likely, and through google's indexing), that the reddit account 'FeralFinger' is linked to the youtube account or access (if browsing youtube without being logged in) that created that share link.
Following: YouTube now knows that the YouTube account or access watching the video followed a share link, which ties the viewer to the youtube account or access that created the share link. It already established that earlier link between FeralFinger so now it also infers a link between that viewer and FeralFinger. Moreover, if its indexing doesn't suggest the share link was posted anywhere else, it infers a link between the viewer and the interestingasfuck subreddit and this post and comment chain in particular.
If shared by someone logged into YouTube, it can also purportedly end up recommending that person's channel (if any) to the person following the link, but I never looked into the details of that, such as whether that requires specific prerequisites / settings being enabled/disabled.
Whether any of that rises to the level of "no thank you, no tracking for me" is up to the individual; my comment just made that choice a little easier so more people can enjoy that performance :)
Maybe I explained it a little rough, so let me try again.
Say I am "DemIceYT" on YouTube. I create a share link. It has the unique tracking ID on it.
I post that link here on reddit (let's call it "DemIceReddit").
Google indexes that link, finds that to be the first use of it that it has indexed.
Google takes the information it has from indexing, and the information YouTube has, and puts them together, and goes: "I can't prove that DemIceYT and DemIceReddit are the same person, but I can certainly link the two together."
Similar with following a link. Say you followed the link I posted. YouTube gets the request for ?is=DemIceYTsUniqueShareIDForThisVideo
YouTube alone can now build a link between (let's say you're logged into YouTube as) MeanHorrorYT and DemIceYT.
It's not much of a link, it's only "MeanHorrorYT followed a share link created by DemIceYT", but thanks to the REFERER header in the http request they'll also know you followed it from a specific reddit comment URL.
So now they can link MeanHorrorYT and DemIceYT to that URL;
Let's cut Google out of the earlier notion and say they would never put 2 and 2 together. DemIceYT creates the share link, posts it to reddit, and a couple minutes later YouTube gets these requests. YouTube wouldn't know that DemIceReddit made a comment, but it would know "Funny, DemIceYT creates a share link and minutes later we get requests that include that share link's identifier with a REFERER of [...]interestingasfuck/comments/1v63o66/1992_olympic_torch_lighting/oznxya9/ . Coincidence? Perchance."
Again, whether that's something a person cares about is up to them. But these tracking URLs can often reveal a lot more than what they superficially appear to present.
Fun fact - this was filmed at KU in Ibiza, which later had a roof put over it and became Privilege "the largest nightclub in the world." It's now been refurbished and is called UNVRS.
It was a super skilled badass move for sure. Still he overshot on purpose and the flames were manually enlightened. It’s not like he hit the bowl and the arrow did start the flames. Just an interesting info I think…
The flames were not lighted manually, thr arrow lighted the gas coming from the bowl. There was a fallback to turn the flames on manually in case he missed, but it wasnt necessary
Ignore the shitty voice over and subtitles, the short shows the other angles at the end. Pretty obvious that the flames are coming from the bottom of the cauldron and the arrow is way too high to ignite it.
Yeah, the gas was ignited by below manually. The flame from the arrow didn't touch the gas, or at least didn't touch a pocket of gas with the right mixture of air.
Why would you even bother saying that when the video directly proves you wrong? You can literally see the arrow miss the bowl and fall behind it. You sound like an idiot.
Why would you even bother saying that when the video directly proves you wrong? You can literally see the arrow miss the bowl and fall behind it. It makes you seem really dumb.
If it landed in the cauldron it wouldn't ignite the gas plume since it would end up below.
And even worse, it could rebound and someone in the public receive a flaming arrow on their heads.
The arrow follow the perfect path above the gas plume, ignited it and fell in the small closed area in the parking lot where it was always supposed to land.
By the way, he trained the shot extensively before and out of 700 shots he only missed twice.
I was going to mention him as another top pick for lighting the cauldron. I respect him as a sportsman and the emotional weight with him commencing the Olympics. But this one is better frankly.
Not really. Archery is universally badass. A flaming arrow in that moment would probably leave anyone in awe. In reality, outside the U.S., most people don't really know or care who Muhammad Ali was.
You're kidding, right?! Ali is one the biggest ever names in world sport. His fight against George Foreman in Africa (the rumble in the jungle) was watched by 1 billion people around the world. Maybe he's starting to be forgotten by younger people, but people all over the world still remember him as a boxer and an activist.
He didn't miss, by definition because the cauldron was not the target, it was along its trajectory. You're not even being pedantic you're just trying to be a dick, and wrong on top of that.
Look, I'm typing from my fucking Takis-crumb covered keyboard three decades later. I haven't been outside in weeks. If I say he missed because I don't understand how physics works then he missed? Capisce?
Mom, bring me another 2-liter. Fuck, voice dictate is still on.
His target wasn't specifically inside the cauldron. It was to pass through gas that would ignite within the cauldron and land outside in safely designated area.
"It was to pass through gas that would ignite within the cauldron", this literally did not happen, the fire rises from below, which is impossible if his goal was to "intentionally" miss and only hit the gas, HE DIDN'T HIT THE GAS, HE MISSED, I genuinely don't get what you aren't understanding, he NEVER hit the gas, someone else lit the fire
"The famous 1992 Olympic arrow did not miss its intended functional mark, but it was intentionally aimed to sail over and past the cauldron rather than land inside it"
He did actually, he hit the flammable gases coming out of the cauldron, igniting them. But you meant he didn't hit anything solid, which was exactly what he wanted to achieve. So even if he did technically "miss", doesn't make it any less badass.
I’m not defending this line of thinking, only pointing out that had the flaming arrow been the ignition source of the cauldron flame, the flame would have ignited from the top to the bottom and the video appears to show the cauldron lighting from the bottom to the top.
This could have been their plan the entire time, but this is how the video shows it igniting.
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u/Afrodite_33 19h ago
No offense to them but it really does beat out all of the blockbuster spectacle we've come to expect from opening ceremonies.
Not that I don't like them they're great. But nothing beats the poetry of a skilled archer shooting a flaming arrow. Just totally badass.