Tabla de contenidos para Issue 157 en Bow International

As we move into a new year, once again, the calendar ahead is looking decidedly impermanent. It’s still possible that disruption and even full lockdowns might be back once again, after a back-half of 2021 filled with relative freedom. Throughout the Covid era, which is rapidly approaching its second anniversary, I’ve consciously tried to avoid putting a lot of ‘pandemic-specific’ content in the magazine – because I thought you, dear reader, would be getting plenty of that elsewhere, and the point of a magazine appearing on your doormat is to inform and provide a bit of respite, to talk about doing things you actually enjoy. Nevertheless, the world has changed irrevocably in all kinds of ways, and it appears that Covid is here to stay with us for a while…

Regular Bow contributor and head of Third Eye Archery, Kristina Dolgilevica, is launching a unique, affordable remote coaching programme aimed exclusively at experienced barebow archers. Unlike other membership programmes, the Barebow PRO Team seek to unite a small diverse group of enthusiastic archers into a team and a community. The programme will be arranged on a monthly basis and feature specialist remote clinics, including individual performance analysis and full form video assessments. Every member will receive a one-off, limited edition Lionhart shooting shirt with their name to represent the PRO Team. For information, eligibility, application and fees contact: info@thirdeyearchery.com, quoting ‘Barebow PRO Team’.…

With the past 19 odd months that everyone has been through around the world, we have all had to make adaptations to life, and the sport of archery is no exception. It may not as simple as indoors and outdoors any more. People will likely find themselves shooting indoor rounds outdoors, mixing restrictions and ‘new norms’ with World Archery bylaws changing. What could this mean for competition, as we move forward? First, let’s run through what changed for the sport during the most recent World Archery Congress (see Bow 155) regarding timings. The bylaw has reduced shooting time from 40 seconds per arrow to just 30 seconds in “individual qualification for Olympic rounds, compound rounds and indoor match rounds where alternate shooting does not apply, including shoot-offs.” Simply put, this…

There is a huge number of strings on the market, all claiming to improve your scores with unique selling points, to grab your attention. With so many choices it can be confusing to know which is the right string for your bow, so here we will look at some of the popular options being used today. The type of bow you shoot and following any manufacturer’s recommendations will dictate the choice of string material you use, but even then there is still a lot of choice. Who makes your strings is also an important consideration as the performance and reliability will reflect in the build quality. Problems such as too much creep/settling down in a recurve string or problems with compound peep sight rotation are almost always down to how…

The article on outlined training sessions for clubs is aimed at competitive athletes. This seminar introduces archery athletes to a 300-arrow routine that will certainly take them to their physical and mental performance limits. Optionally, this training seminar can be conducted as a challenge, whereby participants can win points within the training sections. TRAINING SEMINAR NO 9: 300-ARROW SPECIAL TRAINING DURATION OF THE TRAINING SESSION: about eight hours BRIEF DESCRIPTION: This training seminar is aimed at competition athletes who are able to be pushed to their physical and mental performance limits with a 300-arrow range on a single training day. The variable training contents were selected to train the special skills of the participating archers, but also to provide inspiration for a variety of goal-oriented training contents. OPTIONAL: Participants can…

Does colour itself matter? For many years, red was considered the sporting colour of choice – think of Tiger Woods winning fifteen major golf titles in his trademark red shirt. A highly influential academic article in Nature magazine examined several combat sports at the 2004 Athens Olympics and found that across two-thirds of weight classes (in sports where colours are randomly assigned), red had more winners than blue. Other studies examined English football teams playing in red at home over many decades and claimed a small but subtle statistical anomaly. Why? The colour red plays a large role in signalling superiority throughout the animal world, which is thought to influence people, too. However, a paper released in January 2022 suggests that the various hypotheses are flawed, and red does not have…

Even though the button is an enormously important part of most recurve bows, the range of options available is not huge. The upper price range is dominated by the long-established Beiter button, as used by the majority of elite recurve archers – with a few boutique options available, such as the Wifler button reviewed in Bow 142. The middle range is dominated by the Shibuya DX and buttons from bow manufacturers such as Spigarelli and Fivics. The cheapest options include Cartel, Avalon or Decut. At around €104, the new Zniper button is competing at least on price with the very top of the range. The Zniper arrow rest, with a compoundstyle vertical drop-down mechanism, caused a sensation among barebow archers worldwide. The highly configurable barebow tab that appeared some time…

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The South Korean city of Gwangju will host the World Archery Championships and congress in 2025. Gwangju, in the southwest of the country, was selected ahead of Madrid by ten votes to one at a meeting of the executive board. The competition will be held at the Gwangju International Archery Centre, which hosted the archery competitions at the Universiade in 2015, with a temporary arena next to the Asia Culture Centre for the finals. Gwangju will be part of next season’s international calendar, too, replacing Shanghai as the Asian leg of the archery World Cup in 2022, due to ongoing issue with travel restrictions in China. It will be the third time that Korea has hosted the championships, following editions in Seoul in 1985 and Ulsan in 2009. Gwangju has…

Archery GB hosted their National Indoor Championships at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, on the 5th December 2021. Against a background of changing COVID legislation, thankfully the competition could go ahead this year, after unfortunately it had to be cancelled in 2020 due to restrictions on the numbers who could gather. The National Championships was just one event on the three-event weekend, taking place on the Sunday. The Junior Indoor National Championships and TRU Ball Axcel Back2Back took place on the Saturday, all at the same venue. The Back2Back saw the Dutch husband and wife team Mike and Gaby Schloesser both take gold in the men's compound and women's recurve respectively. The national competition was a WA18, with a cut at the 32nd place for compound and recurve, and a cut at…

At the Tokyo Olympics, for the first time in a major international competition, in addition to the arrow results the pulse of the athletes was shown in the lower left corner of the TV picture at the time of shooting. Similar systems had been trialled on the World Archery stage as long ago as 2012, but now a non-intrusive technological solution had been found. As a former trainer of the junior squad of the Northwest German Shooting Association (NWDSB), I had already taken the pulse of young male and female athletes for the first time in the summer of 2004. With the help of the training book Archery for Shooters, which I also wrote at that time, I gave them objective assessments with targeted training recommendations for their strength, endurance…

The teachings credited to Confucius, (551 - 479 BCE; Kong Qiū, Master Kong, the Greatest Sage), laid the foundation of Chinese and East Asian culture. Confucius was born in the vassal state of Lu in eastern China. He lived in an age when the power of the feudal lords exceeded monarchs; they waged wars, disrupted society, and disturbed the peace of their communities. This socio-political unrest must have played a big part in Confucius’s life, and has been an important influence on his work, especially on the development of his philosophical ideas about stability and tradition – specifically, his ‘harmonious’ ethics, and the revival of ancient ritual practices, and of familial and ancestral traditions. Unsurprisingly, one of the ‘Six Arts’ practised under the Zhou dynasty (1122-256 BCE) was archery, and…

AT A GLANCE The King (2019) Director: David Michôd Written by: David Michôd, Joel Edgerton Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Robert Pattinson, Lily-Rose Depp, Sean Harris, Ben Mendelsohn Running time: 140 minutes Watch: on Netflix Director David Michôd’s The King, which reimagines Shakespeare’s Henriad plays (including Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, and Henry V, all set in the 15th century) is the latest of hundreds of adaptations of the works and one of many to feature the Battle of Agincourt, the last and greatest military victory for archery. The King follows the life of a young Prince Hal, from his days drinking and gambling to his rise to the throne of England after the death of his father, from where he has to navigate a dangerous palace and people bent…

Is archery a martial art? If you just go by dictionary definitions, then the answer is a straight yes. The actual phrase 'martial art' dates back to Europe in the 16th century, and can refer to any kind of military fighting system used in battle by soldiers. That would definitely includes archery, even if the longbow had long been replaced by gunpowder weapons in the armouries of Europe by that point. Many of these ‘Western martial arts’ evolved into other modern Olympic sports like fencing and javelin, relics of military pasts given expression in sport. Some people consider boxing to be a martial art. The encyclopedia may say one thing, but to most people, ‘martial arts’ usually refers to the organised fighting systems which originated in East Asia as forms…

The individual bronze medallist at the 1972 Olympic Games, Emma Vasilyevna Gapchenko, has died at the age of 83. The Russian archer won three gold medals at the world championships in 1969–73, including the individual world title in 1971. She was European champion three consecutive times in the years 1970-1974, and apparently set 14 Soviet records and two world records. After retiring from competing, Gapchenko worked as an archery coach and archery judge. She is remembered as one of the biggest stars of her era.…

Paris 2024 has announced that the Seine will serve as the venue of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, with athletes set to travel in boats along a six-kilometre route during the spectacle. Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet, a three-time Olympian, said the objective was to make the Opening Ceremony open to everyone, with estimates predicting 10 times more spectators will be able to watch the event compared to a stadium ceremony. Many spectator areas will be free. Organisers say that the Seine will be transformed into a “runway for athletes”, with national delegations set to travel on around 170 boats down the river. The six-kilometre route would allow for a full 'immersion' into Paris, with landmarks including the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde featuring…

We spoke to Stuart Taylor, the senior compound men's National Champion for 2021, to find out what helped him get to the win, how grassroots archers can progress to the next level and what’s next in his indoor season. Q: HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN THE NATIONAL INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS? A: It feels amazing. I’ve podiumed quite a lot outdoors, but this is my first big national win. It’s also really surprising it happened indoors, because I don’t usually do indoors, having never felt like I’ve been up to standard! Q: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO WIN? A: It means a lot for me. It’s justification that I’ve been making good decisions for myself, and that the effort is starting to pay off. Q: HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR…

Simon Scott is a veteran compound archer and the owner of Reign Bowstrings, which supplies compound and recurve strings to an huge number of archers in the UK and around the world. Bow caught up with him at the National Indoor Championships and asked him about strings – what else? “We’ve been in business for eight years. I’ve actually worked in the archery trade all my working life. I started off working at Quicks Archery, and then went on to Custom-Built Archery, and I just decided back in 2013 that it was time for something different. When I left Custom Built I got inundated with people asking me if I was still going to make strings. It’s very hard to make a full time living out of it. Most of…

Can clothing improve your performance? You are unlikely to be surprised to learn that the answer is ‘yes’. Most articles concerning clothing and archery cover the importance of preparing for multiple weather conditions, which includes making sure that you’ve got all the appropriate gear with you. We learn early on in the sport that the weather can be unpredictable, so we turn up to tournaments armed with waterproofs, thermal base layers, woolly hats and warm jumpers. Some of this is more important than just staying dry: your muscles perform best when warm, which reduces the risk of injury. Most competitive archers are constantly on the look out for anything to give them an advantage, something that can help to improve performance, increase our personal best or raise us in the…

In my recent article “Tips on optimising your field archery gear” in Bow 156, I noted that while I use X10s with my recurve bow on the target range, I use ACEs on the field course. The ACEs have less mass than the X10s and hence a higher initial speed. At the longest distances on the field course (60m) their speed is still greater than for the X10s, although the X10s overtake them at very long distances. That means that my sight settings are closer together for the ACEs than for the X10s and hence I have more tolerance in dealing with distance estimation errors and slopes. The ACEs, while having a larger diameter than the X10s, still have a reasonably small diameter and are hence still quite good when…

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, announced at the end of December 2021 that there was to be a review into crossbow sales and ownership, just days after a 19-year-old man was arrested at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day allegedly carrying one and threatening to assassinate the Queen. Under current legislation, it is an offence for anyone under 18 to buy or possess a crossbow and for anyone to sell a crossbow to someone aged under 18. As has been pointed out by the tabloid press last week and many times previously, it is painfully easy to buy them on the internet, and many archery shops sell them, too. The kneejerk response from the Government was welcomed by some. There have been many previous calls for stricter controls on crossbows, and…