Innehållsförteckning för Issue 144 från Bow International

This issue was supposed to be the grand Olympics special, and your esteemed editor was supposed to be there, and then fly home, typing furiously, to produce an issue within an incredibly short deadline – it was all planned out perfectly. Of course, that isn't happening now until next year – fingers crossed. As Bow goes to press, it has been just a fraction over four years since the archery finished in Rio, a great competition held right in the middle of one of Rio's tougher neighbourhoods. (During the Paralympics in Rio, an uneasy truce amongst the gangsters who ran the three large favelas on the hills surrounding the Sambodromo apparently collapsed, and you could hear gunshots almost every single night – not something you normally associate with Olympic venues).…

Jay Barrs, the 1988 Olympic Champion in Seoul was the last champion to win shooting against the field. The 1988 Olympics was the last Games before the introduction of head-to-head elimination matches. The Games were very different to they are today, each archer shot a full 1440 round, followed by a 'Grand FITA' elimination round. Jay Barrs took the win over Korea’s Park Sung-Soo, by two points, 338-336. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE AN OLYMPIC CHAMPION? It’s never going to be a simple answer, it takes years and years of hard work, dedication and hard decisions to make it. Even then it is not a given. Jay Barrs grew up in a family of archers. Whilst living in Florida, there were tournaments pretty much every weekend, so from a…

The AK-47 needs no introduction. Everyone knows it as a distinctly Russian modern weapon. But what of the more ancient weapons? Was there ever a typically Russian traditional bow? The answer to this question is as big and complex as Russia herself. On one hand, the research into Russia’s rich, vast territories is hampered by the scarcity and diffuseness of archaeological evidence, and by the almost complete lack of written histories. However, not all has been lost to time and the elements. Systematic study of Russia’s many peoples and geographies, reconstruction works, secondary accounts, and so on, can help build a picture. This article is a brief introduction to history, classification, development and construction materials of the ancient russian bow, focussing on the more prevalent nomadic composite bow type and…

THIRD FEMALE ARCHER CRACKS 1400 BARRIER Korean teenager An San has become the third recurve woman in history to shoot 1400 points on the WA1440 round, formally known as a 'full FITA', at a competition in Yecheon in July. She joins Park Sung-Hyun, who shot 1405 in 2004, and Ryoo Su Jung, who hit 1400 at an event in July 2019, as the only recurve archers to have achieved the score. An San is regarded as one of the more promising young talents of the current Korean crop of archers, is ranked fifth in the world, and finished the last Olympic selection held by the KAA in third spot. At the same competition, world number one Kang Chae Young shot a world record of 354 points for 36 arrows at…

A SUBTLE JOB Most publications describe in which direction the bow sight should be adjusted in case of arrow deviation from the center (called offset or deviation) based on an arrow group. Here a usually bigger problem for the archer should be discussed, namely when the archer should readjust the bow sight in a tournament, i.e. after how many arrows, and then by how much it should be readjusted. The trivial answer to the question 'when', is first of all when the archer is reasonably sure that the centre of his arrow spread has moved from the center of the target face. To recognise this, however, it usually requires a few arrows, where a loss of score must be accepted. How many arrows should be observed? Are there also situations…

In the last issue of Bow International, we looked at the impacts of the pandemic on elite athletes, coaches and dealers. Another key aspect of the archery landscape is clubs, the primary driver of the sport, especially in the UK. One of the luckier aspects of 'our thing', certainly compared to several other sports, and the leisure and entertainment sector, is that we can fundamentally practice our sport with social distancing in place. Obviously, many changes have to be made, to comply with general government guidelines, but it's clear that archery can work with the situation - especially outdoors. Needless to say, the situation is more complicated than that, because clubs need revenue to survive, and that only comes from archers. It seems that many archers have not yet returned…

The Mantis Shooting System is an small device that mounts on your bow, records your movements while taking a shot, and plots them on a graph. That simple, huh? It's a little more complex than that. As we all know, archery is a game of consistent repetition. The Mantis is a tool designed to improve shooting consistency, by showing you what you are doing, when you are doing it right, and when you start to fade from your best form. The biggest plus from an archer's point of view is that it does so with real data. So much of our sport is developed on how something feels; with the only data analysis coming from the target at the other end of the field (it's one of the things that…

Q I am right-handed and right eye dominant. So I should naturally prefer shooting a right-handed bow, right? But I have always felt more comfortable shooting left-handed and squinting my dominant right eye. Can’t explain why – just feels like the right way to shoot for me. I know this absolutely goes against what I should be doing which is to shoot right-handed. My form and accuracy are reasonably good though and I feel uncoordinated shooting a right-handed bow. But should I instead try to “unlearn” my left-handed style and train myself to be a right-handed shooter?" A Assuming you shoot recurve target or barebow, eye dominance affects people in different ways and the solution will depend on how strong your eye dominance is. It may be the case that…

Worth over £150 The Mantis X8 Shooting Analysis System wants to tell you the whole story. When performance is measured, performance improves. The Mantis X8 is a data-driven approach to improving your shooting. At its core, the X8 is a precision IMU (accelerometer + gyroscope + magnetometer) that analyses movement patterns, sending the data to an app that provides real-time feedback on your shooting performance. The Mantis X8 is designed to answer questions that were previously unanswerable: what about that shot was different? How consistent am I? My body and mind say one thing, but what actually happened? The X8 may change the way you understand your shooting. (See our review on page 23!). These retail for over £150 in the UK. To be in with the chance of getting…