Archery

overview

• Archery in general 
• History
• Disciplines
• Equipment
• Types of bows
• Arrows
• Additional technical devices
• Important archery associations
• Famous archers

Archery in general

Archery is a precision sport that consists in using a bow to shoot arrows and thus hit a particular target. For many people, archery is not only a sport but a means of harmonizing body and mind as it requires concentration and balance. There are a lot of possibilities of practicing archery. Indoors and outdoors, individually or in a team, with expensive modern compoundbows or simple wooden longbows, archery offers fun and entertainment for everyone.

History

Archery is a very old tradition that was practiced already by Stone Age hunters. Later, bow and arrow were also used as a means of warfare. A fragment of the bow that is likely to be the oldest in the world was found in Mannheim-Vogelstang (Germany). It is estimated to be some 17 600 years old. England is referred to as the “home-country” of archery because the English were the first to turn it into a sport with fixed rules.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the sport was revived by famous archers like the Americans Saxton Pope, Art Young or Howard Hill. Howard Hill became famous for his impressive performances as a stuntman in famous films like Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood”.

Since 1972, archery is a discipline at the Olympic Games.

Disciplines

• Traditional archery

Traditional archery refers to shooting without any technical aids. Traditional archers use mainly longbows and recurves.

• Target archery

In target archery, athletes shoot at coloured, circular targets. Standard targets are marked with 10 evenly spaced concentric rings which have score values from 1 to 10 assigned to them. The most common competitions are:

• FITA round

The FITA round is an outdoor competition where every archer has 144 arrows with 36 shot from each of four distances, usually on one day.

• Indoor FITA round

2 ends with 30 arrows per end shot from a distance of 18m. At an indoor FITA round, 3-spot target faces with a diameter of 40cm (juniors 60cm) are employed.

• FITA Olympic round

2 ends with 36 arrows per end form 70m up to the final round.

• Indoor league

Teams of three archers compete against each other. Three arrows are shot per archer form a distance of 18m with a time limit of 2 minutes per end.

• Outdoor league

Teams of three compete against each other. Three arrows per archer per end, with a total of three ends, form 50m with 80cm target faces. All arrows have to be shot within 3 minutes.

• Field archery

Field archery is practiced outdoors. The circular target faces consist of 5 rings. They are black and only the inner ring is gold-coloured. Only 12 of 24 distances are given.

• 3-D archery

3-D archery imitates hunting situations. Archers shoot at foam animals form unknown distances

• Kyudo – Japanese archery

Kyudo is not only about aiming and scoring but also about ceremony and spiritual aspects. The Kyudo bow, called Yumi, differs a lot from western bows, mainly because of its asymmetric form.

• Bowhunting

Hunting game with bow and arrow as well as bowfishing are illegal in some western European countries like Austria and Germany, for example. In some countries, tourists can acquire a license for bowhunting.

Equipment

• Protective equipment

Apart from bow and arrow, there are numerous protective items and technical accessories that are used in archery. Important protective items are bracer, tab and chest-guard.

• Bow and bowstring

The bow consists of the actual bow and the bowstring. Bowstrings can be made of natural material (nettle, linen, hemp, ramie, cotton, sinew, gut, rawhide etc.) or plastic (Dacron, Fast Flite).

Types of bows

• (English) Longbow

The longbow is the most ancient type of bow. It is a bit taller than the archer and usually consists of one piece of wood. No additional equipment like sights can be attached to the longbow.

• Recurve bow

The recurve bow is the most common type of bow. It is smaller than the longbow the ends of its limbs curve forwards slightly.

• Compound bow

The compound bow is the most complex type of bow. It disposes of cams or elliptical wheels on the ends of the limbs that hold the bowstring and the cable.

Arrows

A normal arrow consists of a wooden or plastic shaft, an arrowhead attached at the front end and stabilizers made of real or artificial feathers and a nock at the other end. Depending on the bow, the arrow must have a certain stiffness, the so called arrow spine. There are two main types of arrowheads: the bullet-shaped target points and the traditional broadheads. Fletchings stabilize the flight of the arrow and the nock at the rear end of the arrow serves to keep the arrow in place on the string.

Additional technical devices

A bow can be equipped with various technical devices that facilitate and improve sighting and shooting. Among these are sights (peep-sight, scope and spirit-level, pin-sight), and release aids.

Important archery associations

• FITA (Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc)

The International Archery Federation is the most important archery association in the world. It has established rules for the Olympic Games, world championships and European championships and for national tournaments.

Famous archers

• Current world champions compound archery (after world championships on July 15th 2007):

Women: Eugenia Salvi (Italy)
Men: Dietmar Trillus (Canada)

• Current world champions recurve archery:

Women: Natalia Valeeva (Italy)
Men: Dong Hyun (South-Korea)

• Winners Summer Olympics Athens 2004:

Women Recurve Individual: Sung-Hyun Park (Korea)
Men Recurve Individual: Marco Galiazzo (Italy)

The gold medal in Recurve Team Women as well as in Recurve Team Men went to Korea.