Tabla de contenidos para Issue 139 en Bow International

Welcome to the first Bow International of the new decade. Of course, if you are more pedantic – or more precise, or both – you can argue that the new decade is actually going to start at the beginning of 2021. Good luck with that in the 'real' world. The ticking of the number invariably holds far more of a sway on the collective imagination. It is, of course, an Olympic year, and we will be starting the countdown right here in this issue. It is the very pinnacle of the global sport – and crucially, for the rest of the world. For most people on this planet it will be the only time they ever see archery on television, and clubs and national bodies alike must prepare for the…

After years of contemplating whether or not I should start shooting compound, I finally took the plunge. I had already taken my first shot with a compound bow and almost needed a defibrillator that day. I also purchased all of my own equipment and realised I wouldn’t be able to afford food for the rest of the month. It was all worth it but now it was time to figure out how to really shoot a compound bow. I thought there would be some carry-over from recurve – and I was half right. Things like needing to keep a solid bow arm and continuing to move through the shot were transferable but I needed to learn everything else from scratch. RELEASE AID While I was waiting for my equipment to…

It was a weekend to remember. Now in its second year, and with full headline sponsorship from the huge American manufacturer T.R.U.Ball / Axcel. Hitting 600 archers, it has become the third largest indoor event after Vegas and Nimes – and with almost infinite space to expand across the cavernous Fieri di Roma arena. The Eternal City was finally paid a visit by Brady Ellison, who had skipped the first two stages of the World Series after his ridiculously successful outdoor summer season. Also present was defending champion Crispin Duenas, a mighty presence indoors. Both Ellison and Duenas made the last eight, but both were unexpectedly defeated by a well-known name bursting out of many years of mid-table obscurity: the 2004 Olympic individual champion Marco Galiazzo. It would always be…

HOW DO I STOP MY PEEP SIGHT FROM TWISTING? Having an unruly peep sight can be extremely irritating; a peep that twists out of alignment when at full draw or slowly creeps round during your shot can obscure your sight picture and make your results inconsistent. You may even find that your peep sight is perfect one minute but out of alignment the next, so why does it behave like this and how do you fix it? Bow strings have twists in them in order to bundle the fibres up and create a strong and stable platform for the arrow. These twists make the string more reliable and allow you to make adjustments to ensure it’s the correct length for your set up, but they can also highlight any problems…

To the dismay of ArcheryGB and most British fans of the sport, archery failed to make it onto the Commonwealth Games programme for Birmingham 2022, which was decided a few months into 2019. With sincere apologies for the strength of the archery bid, the organisers decided to give the precious optional spots to women's cricket, beach volleyball, and para-table tennis. But archery and shooting lost out. 'Our thing' has only made it into two of the 21 editions of the Games: Brisbane in 1982, and Delhi in 2010, when Deepika Kumari triumphed. But shooting has been included in every Games except one, in 1966. The main reason given for excluding it was that the proposed venue, Bisley, was too far away and would not give enough benefit to the West…

In recent years indoor archery has become about the pursuit for perfection; this indoor season alone has seen world records falling in the compound category. At the 2nd stage of the Indoor Archery Series in Luxembourg GB junior Ella Gibson broke the FITA 18 record of 596 in the qualification round, this was then beaten at the next stage of the tour by Sarah Prieels who increased it to 597. Dutch Pro Mike Schloesser scored another perfect 600 and is the first (but not the only archer) to accomplish a perfect ranking round in competition. Asked about his performance, he simply said “I think I shot two nines in the tournament, it’s an upgrade on the last competition (in Macau); I shot three nines there.” More and more archers are…

So you want to be good at this archery lark, right? You are making notes, yes? On every aspect of your training? If you aren't, you may be missing a cornerstone of elite training. Recording score data digitally on a smartphone app has some advantages, particularly in terms of being able to track scores across time, but requires you to maintain a charged battery on the range, plus opening up the possibility of distraction from training (see Bow 138). It's worth noting that most elite archers still use good old-fashioned pen and paper; some scientists have argued that the very act of physically writing locks information better into the brain. Michelle Kroppen, now a solid fixture on the German national recurve team, finished 2019 ranked tenth in the world. In…

Arrows do rather a lot in the few moments they spend in the air. They flex vertically and laterally, rotate about their centre of mass in both planes (pitch and yaw) and about their longitudinal axis (roll). Ideally, we would like very little pitch and yaw – we would like to see our arrows fly straight. They will inevitably flex due to the high forces on them during the bow’s power stroke, and we need them to do so in order to have them clear the bow. We would also like them to roll in order to average out small inconsistencies in their construction, and we do that by having the fletches set at an angle to the shaft’s longitudinal axis. We can generally consider an arrow to be incompressible…

“MOUNTED ARCHERY HAS PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN MANY CULTURES – SOMETIMES RIGHT UP INTO MODERN TIMES” As a modern sport, horseback archery (HBA) is a relatively new phenomenon. But its origins date back many thousands of years, and over the course of history it has been practiced and perfected in many different cultures, producing different styles, different disciplines. While some of them have survived the centuries in form of tradition or ritual, others are now being rediscovered by eager practitioners around the world. The roots of horseback archery lie in ancient forms of warfare practiced by mounted warriors. It was the Scythians who first made entire empires tremble with the hoofbeat of their horses and the showers of their arrows. They inhabited the endless plains of the Eurasian steppe…

It’s wintertime, and you may well have been indulging a little in the last month or so, and perhaps wondering how to get back to that next level in the New Year. You probably know a little about what to eat and what not to, but there really isn't a lot of archery-specific nutritional information. So we asked the question: how do elite archers keep focused, fuelled and energised during training camps, competition and being away from home during the indoor season? We spoke to six different archers from around the world: Naomi Folkard, Sjef van den Berg, Gabi Bayardo, Ella Gibson, Mackenzie Brown, and Paul Tedford about how they optimise tournament food, their food habits and any secrets that they hold. NAOMI FOLKARD Four-time Olympian for GBR Naomi has…

Most elite archers keep some kind of training notes, and the Korean national recurve team are no exception. Current world number one and world record holder Kang Chae Young is noted for carefully documenting every arrow shot in competition, and at international level, the coaches keep even more extensive notes on their charges. The documentary about the national team Game Of Numbers, released in 2016, included an over-the-shoulder shot of Ki Bo Bae's training notebook, written in Hangul. The page she was looking at summarised mental coaching. Translated, it reads this: 1. Prioritise shooting bows (Always prioritise shooting bows over other thoughts) 2. Believe in posture techniques (trust my senses) 3. Positivity (Always think “I’m good at this” and “I can do this”) 4. Making a mistake contributes to my…

The Berlin Open is one of the more respected indoor tournaments in Europe. Running since 2012, it has moved venues – and management teams – more than once. There is now ambition here to be one of the major indoor tournaments in the world. They certainly have the city for it; one of the world's most enduringly fascinating, and they also now have the venue; the Horst Korber sports hall in the west of the city, in the shadow of the clocktower of the famous Olympiastadion. The hall is modern and benefits from good lighting and configurability: a finals field is able to be screened off from the qualification arena, despite being part of the same space. There is potential for world-beating here, however, this year's competition was held at…

The Korean gakgung literally translates as ‘horn bow’. In comparison to its other traditional counterparts, it is considered to be the most advanced bow in terms of its engineering. A horn bow comes under the Asiatic Composite bow group. It is a laminated bow; a traditional bow that uses layers of horn, wood and sinew. When these layers are glued together they provide for highly effective energy storage and high energy output on release, hence why it is considered the ‘strongest’ bow (and not because it shoots highest poundage than other bows). At the other end of the spectrum are ‘self ’ bows – the English longbow being the prime example. Due to their straight shape and the properties of the materials used, self-bows need to be long and thick…