INTRODUCTION TO ARCHERY

The basics of modern recurve archery:

Archery started over 30 thousand years ago as means of hunting and first appeared in the olympics in 1900.

The first archery equipment consists of only a bow and several wooden arrows. However, it has evolved today to a modular system that includes a stabilizer system, sights, arm and chest guards, and limbs that make use of synthetic materials such as carbon fibre. These advancements in equipments used allows an archer to shoot an arrow up to 240km/h in speed - which is as fast as the fastest roller coaster in the world!

Modern archers shoot distances of 18m up to a distance of 70m. A modern and professional bow can be as tall as 1.9m in height, and weigh up to 6kg, with a draw weight of 16-25kg.

Modern archers have multiple styles of competitions: 

- Individual; and

- Teams of 3

And both consists of male only or female only (e.g. A team of 3 males will compete with another team of 3 males, while a team of 3 females will compete with another team of 3 females.)

• Fun fact: there are also competitions for mixed team, where a team consisting of a pair of archers will compete with a team consisting of another pair of archers (archers in the same team can be of different genders).

Regardless of competition type, archers follow a set system for scoring, with the winner of each set winning 2 set points. First individual to score 6 set points will wins in an individual competition, while the first team to 5 set points will win in the team events. When archers or teams have a tie of 5-5 or 4-4 respectively, an event known as the one arrow shoot out will take place - with the closest arrow to the middle of the target taking the win.

Sources

World Archery. “RA beginner’s guide to recurve archery | Archery 360” YouTube