Table of contents for Issue 164 in Bow International

A really global edition of Bow, this one. After the double whammy of the World 3D Championships and the World Field Championships — held a continent apart, but featuring several of the same stars — it seems that field and 3D are increasingly part of the conversation around archery at the moment. It certainly feels like their moment has come, although I’m well aware that for a lot of you, it’s all you ever do. We will have a full report from Yankton in the next issue. Closer to home, it was the NFAS paper face tournament, one of their two annual ‘majors’, and Alex Tyler supplies a brilliant report as usual. Kristina Dolgilevica vanished on one of her usual adventures, Korean bow in hand, to the World Nomad Games…

World Archery is now using a new calculation system for the world rankings, in the first significant change to the procedure for a decade. Up to four outdoor results, two indoor results and one field result will be used to calculate each archer’s position in the list, with events on the Indoor Archery World Series, world and continental field championships, and the field events at the World Games now offering world ranking points. This ranking change applies only to the individual able-bodied categories: recurve men, recurve women, compound men and compound women. Tournaments have been split into five groups that define the maximum available world ranking points. The events in the top group, each worth 100 points to the winner, are the Olympics, Paralympics, World Archery Championships and World Archery…

When it comes to archery, it’s well-known that the 'mental game' plays a huge role in performance, and mental management has become a teachable skill. Mental health is less commonly spoken about, although over recent years more athletes have been opening up about their experiences with it. GBR international, European Games team champion, world championship medallist and Tokyo Olympian Sarah Bettles spoke to Mimi Landström about her experiences. I'm 29 years old and I have struggled with my mental health since I was 17. At 19 I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and last year I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I struggled mentally in the build-up to the Olympics and told myself that I just needed to get there, and as soon as I got home, everything would be…

I have often heard it said that “the ranking round is not important; it is the matches that matter”. Usually, these comments come from archers who did not rank very high but think they might be good at matches. But do they represent reality? Certainly, we do see some archers who are ranked down the list win medals. A recent example was compounder Mohan Bhardwaj, who ranked 42nd after qualification at the World Cup in Korea in 2022. He then went on to win the silver medal, losing only to Mike Schloesser in the gold final. Other examples are easy to find and I have often had people point to such examples as proof that ranking does not matter. A handful of high-performing archers specifically prefer matchplay to qualification, Australia’s…

The question I get asked most often by archers across the world is “When should I shoot, and when should I physically train?” Annoyingly, the most accurate answer is that it is totally up to the individual and their personal goals. For example: this year I wanted to loose some weight slowly and steadily, after the pandemic stress, so I set up an initiative with my business @StrengthbyLucy to be active every day. I make sure I move every day be it a run, a walk, a cycle or getting my muscles pumping in the gym. This is great for fat loss, but not so good for focused archery performance. So I also have to train as an archer, ideally four times a week. If I was a full-time archer…

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ARCHERY OUT OF THE NEXT COMMONWEALTH GAMES…AGAIN Archery has not been selected for inclusion on the programme of the Victoria 2026 Commonwealth Games in Australia following an announcement on the optional sports selected by the organising committee. Unlike the Olympic Games, archery has never been a core sport in the Commonwealth Games, and has in fact appeared only twice in its history. Golf, 3x3 basketball, 3x3 wheelchair basketball, coastal rowing, shooting, para shooting, BMX racing, cross-country mountain biking, track cycling and para track cycling were instead chosen as additional disciplines. Para events are included in the main programme rather than being a separate event, and Archery Australia submitted an innovative bid that would have seen para and able-bodied athletes compete together in a new format for the mixed team competition.…

The ‘Robin Hood’ of two arrows shot by the Korean mixed team of An San and Kim Je Deok in competition at the Olympics in 2021 has gone on display in a glass tube in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. The archers donated them to the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage. An San’s arrow smashed into the back of Kim’s arrow already in the target during the semi-finals of the competition. Robin Hoods featuring barrelled X10 arrows are rare, and it is thought to be the first time it has been caught on camera. Both arrows scored the maximum 10 points.…

Ah, Cumbria. Home of fells, daffodils and lakes, right? Wrong, as I was firmly corrected by the owner of Mains Farm, where the 2022 NFAS National Championships were held. This was the Eden Valley, with low hills, trees and farmland rather than rock. The farm provided a spectacular setting for two courses which wound through woods and grassy slopes above a tributary to the River Eden. From a crisp start on Saturday morning, the weather stayed fine and dry all weekend. For the Nationals, the targets are NFAS’s own range of paper-face animal targets. Archers shot 76 targets over the weekend, set by North Lakes Field Archers. Unusually, a number of bosses were placed in the open, meaning gap shooters had less to reference when distance judging, adding another test…

The world’s only multi-sport event dedicated to the promotion of traditional sports, The World Nomad Games (WNG), was held for the fourth time after a four-year gap. This year it was accommodated by its first-time host, Turkey, the three earlier events having taken place in Kyrgyzstan (2014, 2016 and 2018). It took place in a vast area next to the remote historic lake town of Iznik, 90km from Istanbul, and welcomed over 3,000 athletes, and reportedly over a million visitors, over the four-day period (29 September to 2 October). I received the news that my place at the games had been confirmed whilst training in South Korea. It was an honour and a privilege to have been selected as the only UK representative across the 40+ sports this year. OVERVIEW:…

It is the time of year, in 2022, for both the World 3D and World Field Archery Championships. Having covered previously what an initial tournament experience requires, as regards readiness and preparation, it is time now to explore the challenges and rewards of archery’s supreme test: the field course. At the very outset let me underline that despite the need to develop a special skillset, there is nothing more invigorating than a day in the woods, matching your archery know-how with nature’s terrain. It need not be that daunting, and the learning process and the skills developed are supremely satisfying. I am clearly biased, as my personal successes in our great sport are closely linked to field archery, with World FITA and IFAA Masters World titles in 2002 and the…

The 7th September 2022 marked exactly 50 years since the start of the archery competition at Munich in 1972 — the return of the sport to the modern Olympics after a 52-year absence. After being included at four early editions of the Games from 1900 to 1920, a lack of international governance and standardised rules saw the sport dropped from the Olympic programme. After many years of lobbying, much of it by FITA president Inger Frith, it finally returned in 1972, in a Games ultimately overshadowed by the ‘Munich Massacre’. Archery has been part of the Olympics ever since, gradually increasing its profile and changing the rules to become more spectator friendly. Eventually, after years of lobbying by World Archery (then known as FITA), it officially became a ‘core sport’…

Great Britain’s Bryony Pitman, the current world number two, has been elected as the field archery representative on World Archery’s athletes’ committee after a vote held at the 2022 World Archery Field Championships in Yankton, USA. Pitman replaces Britain’s Naomi Folkard following the five-time Olympian’s retirement from the sport and transition into coaching. Folkard was also chair of the committee; and Bow’s very own Crystal Gauvin has been appointed as the new chair of the athlete committee.…

The National Tour Finals, Archery GB’s usual season-ending extravaganza returned, in 2022, to the familiar setting of Woolaton Hall in Nottingham. For the first time ever, barebow archers appeared at the finale, with two gold medal matches kicking off Saturday’s entertainment. In the women’s competition, Helen Brown and Kim Doherty went for gold, with Brown leading from the off. A final tied end on 23 apiece was enough for Helen to take the match to 6-4, naming her the first barebow women’s champion of the National Tour Final. In the barebow men’s gold final, Ralph Barwise shot against Wilco van Kleef-Bolton. The almost seven-feet-tall Dutchman Wilco took the first set with 25 points to Ralph’s 17. In the third end, a 27 from Wilco against Ralph’s 16 was all he…

Being a sponsored archer, eh? If you follow the sport, it sometimes seems as if the hashtags will never end. Reading about your favourite archer’s achievements on social media might be followed by a long list of “I couldn’t have done it without…” and a long list of products, right down to their underwear. Maybe. You might be thinking: it must be great to get all that free gear, just for shooting. While the costs of taking up archery compared to many other sports is sometimes overstated (especially with a thriving second-hand market), it is true that once you start moving up the ladder — competing nationally at the top level, chasing Master Bowman scores and higher, or trying to make an international side — gear expenses start increasing dramatically,…

If there’s one place that’s the home of 3D archery, it’s Italy. Of the 10 editions of the 3D world championships held so far, five have been held in Italy, and this is the second time the tournament has been to Terni. Only one tournament has ever been outside Europe; in Lac La Biche in Canada. 3D, and field archery especially, remains strongly associated with Italy and the Italian federation Fitarco, which organised the 10th edition here, delayed a year because of Covid. Terni isn't well-known, it’s a former industrial and steel town an hour north of Rome with ancient roots. The main tournament itself was held in the hills around Stroncone Meadows, a plateau 800 metres above Terni itself, and part of a famous pilgrimage route, once trodden by…

Prior to the introduction of matchlock rifles, the bow was the quintessential Korean weapon – especially the pyeonjeon. The pyeonjeon was, for the most part, an ordinary bow except it utilised a long grooved stick or firing tube called a tonga. This secret Korean innovation increased the range of the arrows and, because a tonga was needed, made it difficult for the enemy to pick up and reuse the Korean arrows. According to a Korean officer from the early 20th century, the tonga tended to sow deadly confusion amongst the enemy: “The grooved stick can be seen by the enemy, who thinks that the arrow has not yet been released so that he continues to watch the bowman when suddenly the arrow coming unseen from the sky pierces him.” During…