Everyone is more or less familiar with archery. Everyone identifies that it is a sport where you try to hit a target with arrows propelled by a bow. But is it as simple as that? Actually yes, but we want to tell you about it in a more detailed way so that you can enjoy this sport to the fullest, especially now that we have (we can’t say enough ^.^) the Olympic Games around the corner.
Also, make sure to check out the following guide about all single pin bow sights reviewed which is a must-read for anyone who wants to get started in archery.
History of Archery
Athletics is said to be the oldest sport in the world, but archery may actually be. Although it is true that in the Paleolithic when it appeared, it had very different uses from leisure and competition.
For centuries, the bow was a weapon for hunting and warfare that evolved and developed in different ways depending on the area of the world. Finally, with the arrival of firearms, it became obsolete and was relegated to the practice of sports.
Rules of Archery
There are many different types of archery. From the practically unknown Popinjay, which consists of shooting wooden birds at a certain height almost vertically to throw them, to the Sky Archery, which is a kind of biathlon where the carbine is replaced by the recurve bow.
However, the most recognized and most practiced modalities at the competition level are target shooting, either outdoors or indoors.
Outdoor Archery
This modality is disputed, as its own name indicates, outdoors. The international rules of archery establish a distance of 70 meters to the targets in the recurve archery competitions and 50 meters for the composite ones.
The size of the targets is also different. Although both are made up of 10 concentric rings scored from 1 to 10, with 10 being the inside, the recurve bow measures 122 centimeters in diameter (A in the image below) and the compound bow 80 (B in the image below). In the latter case, it is common to eliminate the 4 outer rings in international competitions.
Indoor Archery
In this case, the distance to the target is 18 meters for both recurve and compound bow and the target is formed by 3 vertical targets with the 6 inner rings each. Each archer shoots one arrow per target at a time.
In either of the two modalities, there is individual and team competition.
Individual Archery Rules
Regardless of whether the competition is outdoor or indoor, there are individual and team events. In the individual championships, the most usual is to start with a round where each competitor has 72 arrows (60 in the room) thrown in batches and whose score is accumulated. The final score determines who will be the head of the series, who does not participate in the first round of elimination.
Once the elimination rounds have been reached, they are played in pairs of two contestants, each of whom has five rounds of three arrows. However, the scores are different depending on the type of bow.
In recurve bow, setpoints are assigned. That is to say, the score of the 3 arrows is added up. The archer with the highest score adds 2 points. In case both have achieved the same they add 1 point each. The archer who has previously scored 6 points wins the elimination.
In a compound bow, the points scored in each round are added up. At the end of the five rounds, the player with the highest score wins.
In both cases, if there is a tie at the end, the arrow is removed. Each archer has one shot and the one who places the arrow closest to the center wins.
The winners of these rounds continue to advance as in any other type of competition (round of sixteen, quarter, semi-final and final, which also includes a B-final for 3rd place).
Team Archery Rules
When competing for teams, whether they are of the same sex or mixed, the tests are conducted in the same way but accumulating the scores of the two team members.
In the case of the recurve bow, the scores of the two members of the team in each round of shots are added up. Those who have scored more points add up to two set points. If both teams tie, one each.
There are other formats of competition but these are the most common and those we usually see in the Olympic and World Cup events, from which we pass the finals live on quite a few occasions.
Paralympic Archery
Archery is also practiced in an adapted way by sportsmen and women with different physical disabilities.
In this case, athletes are classified by the degree of limitation when practicing the sport and different categories are formed (lack of an upper limb, dysfunction of the lower limbs, balance or visual deficiencies…). Depending on the category (we are preparing an article on the Paralympic categories of each sport that we will soon link from here) archers can use different types of aids.
The rules of adapted Archery do not vary from those we have just seen a few paragraphs above.
And this is basically all you need to know about competitive Archery. There would be many more things to tell, of course, but if you want to follow the World Cups, the World Cups, the Olympics… this will serve as an initiation. By the way… Are you going to follow Archery from now on? Did you already follow it? Do you find it interesting? Will you share this article?
