Coaching, and nurturing, a future Olympian
As remarkable as Tyack’s journey to the top of the archery rostrum has been – and still is, as he continues to work towards qualification for a third Olympic Games – it almost certainly wouldn’t have happened without a five-hour flight, a fateful trip to the local library, and extraordinarily inconvenient vacation.
And while that might read more like a promising script for Wes Anderson’s next hit film, it was all too true for the future Olympian and his woefully out-of-depth mother, who’d never even shot a bow before her son took up the sport.
“We were at a club and just before a national event, the person at the club, who was mentoring him and giving him some coaching, had gone on his holiday and a part of the bow broke,” begins Rankin-Tyack.
“We were about to go on this very big flight, and I thought, ‘what am I going to do?’ So I just went to the library and I got the absolute Bible of archery. I just happened upon it from 1975.”
She followed the instructions as written, and repaired her son’s bow in time for him to compete – a service he, and an entire generation of Australian archers, will be eternally grateful for long into the future.
“Ryan went to the event and he shot an awful lot of records at that event,” added a visibly proud Rankin-Tyack.
And so, without any formal training, she took up coaching duties on a full-time basis.
“I needed to keep that club alive for when Ryan came home to practise. We had to have somewhere for him to shoot, so I kept the club alive and that drove my passion truly for the sport.”
Eventually, she took up archery herself and transitioned from coaching elite archers to instilling basic skills in the next generation of Australian archers.
“The enjoyment I get is not just the coaching of top athletes,” explained Rankin-Tyack. “It’s also the development from the very beginning stage.”
“I have some quite strong relationships with…particularly the young women I coach. Even if they’ve left the sport, they keep up a relationship with me, and that is my reward.”