Tabla de contenidos para Issue 151 en Bow International

I took my first tentative steps into archery [gets pipe, slippers…] on a beginner’s course in a chilly hall in North London many moons ago. A few lessons in, gingerly holding our Samick Polaris trainer bows, I remember one novice was decidedly unkeen on the sight that had now been added to the riser. “We’ve got a barebower!” said the coach to the entire hall. On the other end of the line, Cliff Capps, that well-known doyen of the London archery scene, said (after a suitably dramatic pause): “Welcome to the true path.” It got a laugh, but he had a point. If archery is a calling, barebow is a mystical quest. It’s essentially a syncretic skill, fusing traditional archery with all the modern developments in materials and technology that…

A much-reduced Vegas Shoot took place at its usual venue, the South Point Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, in mid-April. It was preceded by an online ‘virtual’ competition. The professional championship shootdown, which saw 110 startes, was won for the second year in a row by Kyle Douglas, who took home $15,000. He beat out 14 other men, who had shot clean for three days, and the ‘lucky dog’ Steve Marsh. The women’s compound division was won by newcomer Liko Arreola from Hawaii, who is just 13 years old. Arreola was the only woman who shot a clean 900 points, the youngest woman to have ever shot a perfect 900 in Vegas – and only the seventh woman to join the 900 club in the history of the event.…

Bow’s coverage of international archery has been on pause for an entire year’s worth of issues, and the restarting of the international circus, with barely three months to go before a potentially troubled Olympic Games, was always going to be interesting. The Games may be the biggest thing in the sport but for the recurve side of the competition, occasionally it seems like the Olympics is a black hole, something so immense on the calendar that it sucks in all energy, resources and attention. You feel like there are other things to worry about, but the cachet and importance of becoming an Olympian, and the funding of teams that qualification often secures from national sporting bodies, is often far more important than what will eventually transpire on the field in…

There are around 30 barebow archers in Russia today. But why are the numbers so low compared with the US or Europe? To help me explore in more detail, I have interviewed a number of archers from the barebow community, and have spoken to leading coaches from the former USSR in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. I aim to highlight what the archers and coaches themselves talk about, to give a good overview of the community. It was particularly interesting for me to find out what the coaches with a long-standing tradition and respect for Olympic recurve think of barebow and its specificities: where do they place it on the archery scene today and where do they see it in the future? I questioned barebow’s place in the ‘traditional’ archery scene,…

Q I went and shot (compound) for the first time in a year or so. I currently shoot 40lb, and my shoulders are struggling. What are the best exercises for returning to form? A Let me start by saying that it is way more important to shoot the poundage that allows you to execute the best possible shot for around double the number of shots you will have to make in a tournament than trying to shoot a higher weight and struggling. There have been numerous world records shot by people shooting less than 50lb. With that being said, I definitely think strength training is a great idea, especially if you are already prone to injury. Here are some exercises I recommend for both compound and recurve archers alike: 1)…

The city of Yankton, South Dakota, will host this year’s archery World Cup Final on 29-30 September, immediately after the World Archery Championships at the same location. The finals will complete the 15th year of the international circuit, and it also marks the first time the event will be hosted in the USA. The single location to host the Championships, World Cup Final and biennial World Archery Congress simplifies travelling and quarantine procedures, as well as making it easier to protect athlete well-being. Eight archers will compete in each division for the Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion title and a top prize of 24,000 CHF. At least one of those archers in each category, four in total, is now guaranteed to be from the USA as each discipline has a…

Olympic gold medallists Oh Jin Hyek and Kim Woojin will lead a team of younger internationals to the Olympics in July this year. The 2012 champion Jin Hyek, at 39 years old, is on the men’s team with Kim Je Deok, who is just 17 years old. Je Deok was the bronze medallist at the World Archery Youth Championships in 2019. He will be the youngest male archer that Korea has ever sent to an Olympic Games. World number one Kang Chae Young [third from right, above] whose nickname is ‘The Destroyer’, qualified in first place. She previously came fourth in the selection process for Rio 2016. The other women are 22-year-old Jang Minhee – also a bronze medallist at the 2019 World Youth Championships – and 20-year-old An San,…

China has also revealed its roster for the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Wang Dapeng (pictured above), Li Jialun and Wei Shaoxuan will shoot for the men’s team, while the women’s team features Wu Jiaxin, Long Xiaoqing and Yang Xiaolei. Wu Jiaxin shot a score of 689 in the ranking rounds early in the selection process, just three points off the world record set in 2019. Both Wang Dapeng and Wu Jiaxin competed at Rio 2016. The four other archers will be making their debuts at the Games. Zheng Yichai, the highest ranked and most decorated recurve woman of the past few years, has apparently retired from archery to pursue sport climbing. Former Chinese Olympian He Ying, now a coach for the international side, said that the trials, which lasted…

Lina Björklund is the current World Archery barebow field champion. The 2018 competition marked the third time she has won the world title, with a trophy cabinet bulging with other medals from a archery career that started back in 1997. Most recently, she won the barebow division of the Indoor Virtual World Series in January. She spoke to Kristina Dolgilevica. Do you set archery goals? How do you stay motivated and driven? My goal has always been the next big competition. For example, when I’m going to the European Championship — that’s my goal. Since I have a family now, I don’t have a lot of time to practice, so I try to figure out how much time I need before this competition, how much do I have to practise,…

I took up archery around 2010 after my young son had decided he wanted to buy himself a beginner type jelly-bow to shoot at home. I had shot air rifles & catapults when I was younger so archery seemed to make sense. We shot together at UK NFAS shoots along with my daughter, after trying various styles along the way I eventually settled with the American Flatbow. I shot this for quite a few years & enjoyed a fair bit of success until eventually in 2016 I decided to make the change to barebow, what I strove for was improved accuracy without fitting a sight. I felt I had got as far as I could with gap shooting the flatbow & natural progression dictated that stringwalking a barebow would be…

Great Britain qualified the maximum six places for Tokyo at the last World Championships in Den Bosch in summer 2019, when both the men’s and women’s teams managed to win the first match in the team competition, which is the primary entry route for the Summer Olympics. They were the only European team to qualify all six spots. In the space of little more than half an hour, they essentially changed the direction of British archery, partly because the full qualification helped to secure performance funding for the next Olympic cycle. (The editor has written previously about how that single team match at the World Championships is actually more important, for most countries, than whatever happens at the Games). The women’s team in Den Bosch, Sarah Bettles, Naomi Folkard and…

What is it about barebow archers that makes us think we can just keep shooting, keep competing and keep winning well into our second half-century? I took up archery in my mid-thirties and have enjoyed a fairly extensive international career, competing at World and European field and 3D championships and two World Games for the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team every year since turning 40. I’m now 53 and I find myself wondering how it is that I, and so many other barebow archers, can still be in contention for international selection when most sporting careers are all but over by the age of 35. As I look around me at competitions, both here in the UK and abroad, I see that I am in good company; many of…

Jake Kaminski was a linchpin of the USA men’s recurve team in the last decade, and took team silver medals at both London 2012 and Rio 2016. He retired as an international recurve archer in 2018 and has moved into coaching and developing a high-profile YouTube presence. A key part of this channel is his journey into barebow, probably the highest profile elite athlete to have made the switch. He talked exclusively to Bow. PLEASE TELL US ABOUT THE CHANGES THAT TOOK PLACE IN YOUR CAREER IN 2018 Essentially, the entire industry was on a huge downturn unexpectedly in 2017, after the Olympic Games – every company out there was cutting shooters left and right. This never happens, it’s always an explosion afterwards. All of my sponsorships had lapsed and…

Barebow archers use the tip of the arrow as the aiming device and employ the following three methods of aiming: gap shooting; stringwalking; and facewalking. Face and stringwalking are often combined. Finding the right match for you requires an in-depth understanding of your form, equipment and individual anatomy – only then can these methods be of any use on a consistent basis. Stringwalking is used to its full advantage in field archery, where targets are set at a range between 10 and 50 metres (the longest competition distance for this division). I would like to share some useful tips, precautions and simple step-by-step instructions to help you begin your stringwalking experiment with confidence. I find it useful to explain and remind beginners how barebow aiming works, and how each method…