Innehållsförteckning för Issue 155 från Bow International

With the wrapping of the World Cup Final in Yankton, one of the more intense international outdoor archery seasons in living memory draws to a close. The fact that it all went ahead is important; regardless of whether you take an interest in the international side of things, it is a key part of the engine that drives the sport on all levels, from inspiring juniors to manufacturer confidence. Without archery at the Olympics, which distributes working capital to governing bodies and national Olympic committees, and brings central government funding from all over the world, the sport we do would be hugely diminished. And just a few months ago, no one was quite sure if it was going to happen or not. In this issue of your soaraway Bow, we…

UNDER £20 PARKER STEEL BALLPOINT PEN How are you going to write in your new archery training journal (right) without your new matching arrow pen? This Parker pen will make any writing feel high class; it has such a smooth feel to it, and we love that you can buy cartridges to refill the pen once the ink runs out. • £10.95 • Available from executivepensdirect.com JVD TARGET UMBRELLA The perfect present for the diehard archer who just can’t keep away from the field – even in our glorious British weather. These umbrellas are a popular sight on the range and for good reason: they are strong and durable, ready for rain, hail or sunshine. Give the archer in your life the gift of staying dry. • £10 • Available…

Sara José López Bueno didn’t put a foot wrong in Yankton, qualifying top, taking compound mixed and team golds for Colombia, and then winning the first individual senior world title of her career. She became the first archer to win all three gold medals available at a senior Worlds, not forgetting shooting a perfect 150-point match in the semifinals. The senior World title was a glaring omission in her career. She had previously been to four World Championships but had somehow been denied gold, despite crushingly dominating her discipline for the majority of that time. “It was something on my list,” she said, “and now I can remove it and set new goals.” Quite the understatement. Lopez’s almost unstoppable ability to win matches since she arrived on the scene in…

Professor of Korean studies Thomas Duvernay, a long-standing archer and one of the authoritative figures on the subject, has revised and released his Korean Traditional Archery book this year. The original was published in 2007 and has since been revised; this latest edition is the product of a partnership with his son, Nicholas Duvernay, who has a PhD in applied linguistics. Thomas Duvernay’s book was the first exhaustive body of work about Korean traditional archery (KTA) in the English language and, in the tradition of true scholarship, he intends to continue to revise it, addressing the ‘unanswered’ and newly emerging questions. OVERVIEW This scrupulously researched book is not a handbook or a ‘how-to’ manual – it has more of an encyclopaedic character. It captures both the modern and the ancient…

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Jess Stretton was the youngest ever Paralympics archery gold medallist for Great Britain in the women’s W1 category and now shoots in the compound open category. She became world champion at the Beijing 2017 World Para Championships and set a new Paralympic ranking round record at the Tokyo 2020 Games in August. I am currently reading a bunch of things, I never seem to have just one book on the go at once. The main one at the moment, though, is Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy. It’s about King Arthur rising again but with space travel and having to save the galaxy – not merely Camelot or Avalon. I’m a huge Merlin and King Arthur fan and love a good space exploration story, so to…

WA CONGRESS MEETS, ERDENER RE-ELECTED The 54th World Archery Congress met in Yankton, South Dakota, US, on 16-18 September 2021, ahead of the senior World Archery Championships. Congress is the governing body of the international federation, at which the sport’s rules are set or changed and officers are elected. For the first time, weighted votes were used, rather than each national federation receiving a single vote. The weighting is assessed on each country’s level of international archery activity. Under a logo nodding to that of the Studio 54 nightclub in New York in the 1970s and ’80s, the current president Dr Ugur Erdener was unanimously re-elected as president of World Archery for a fifth and final term, up to the next Olympic Games in Paris in 2025. “Thank you for…

We all lose score through the various combinations of errors we make. Our objective as an archer or coach should be to find those errors and progressively eliminate or minimise them. This is not an easy task, especially as the archers get more skilled – the reasons the top archers lose score can be quite subtle and challenging to isolate, both for them and for the coach. I have watched elite archers shooting many times – they can look very good indeed, yet they still (usually) do not shoot perfect scores. Anything we can find to help in the analysis is useful. One thing I like to do, both as archer and as coach, is to watch the archer’s arrow groups on the target. I try to do this on…

South Dakota is a long way from anywhere, and when you get there, there isn’t much there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. One of the least densely populated states in the USA, the nearest airport to Yankton is the tiny Sioux Falls, a 90-minute drive away. Known for immense open spaces and bitterly cold winters, it’s not the usual haunt of international sport. While it might be a little difficult and expensive to get to, it is an ideal place if you need a lot of space for something, and the National Field Archery Association (organisers of The Vegas Shoot) moved here in 2015 from California to build one of the largest archery facilities on Earth, the NFAA Easton Yankton Archery Center. The World Championships is the biggest event to…

The World Cup Final is usually a separate, glammed-up affair serving as a showcase for the very best of the sport, and previously held in some spectacular locations. Now broadcast in 18 countries, after a torrid couple of years for the international circuit, a decision was taken essentially to tack it on to the end of the World Championships in Yankton, using the same infrastructure and with the athletes already on site. This made a lot of sense for all concerned, although of course it removed a little of the season-ending theatricality. The heavy rain washing over the site on Thursday, after a relatively dry and calm World Championships, certainly didn’t help matters. Some competitors received automatic invites by winning one of the three stages on the international circuit –…

Here at Bow Towers, we were excited to receive a book that featured one of the least explored areas of study: maritime archery. The book is called Facing The Sea, a readable academic work in English from the researchers at the Centre For Maritime Studies (CEMAS) at Stockholm University in Sweden. The contributors are historians, ethnologists, and maritime archaeologists associated with the centre. The chapter “Maritime military archery: bowmen on European warships” was written by Henrik Arnstad and Abigail Christine Parkes, about naval uses of archers, a history spanning three millennia. While there are a few famous stories about bowmen on ships, such as the tale of the Japanese warrior Minamoto no Tametomo, the authors have concentrated the study on European waters between 1000 and 1600, the peak of naval…

As the legend has it, in 1979 Johnny Cash became so concerned about the US placing restrictions on certain exotic woods coming into the country that he had some mahogany cut on his plantation in Jamaica and shipped it via his private plane back to Nashville. The plantation itself is supposedly haunted and was partially burned and left to rot for many years before its restoration in the 1960s. Mahogany is a strong, beautiful, new-world wood famous for its resonance and resistance to decay. Since this time, many handsome and wonderful-sounding guitars have been made from this wood for such artists as Ira Dean and Eric Hamilton. However, John Carter Cash (Johnny and June’s only child), being the avid outdoorsman that he is, wondered if his dad’s mahogany might be…

In June 2021, the return of archery to the Commonwealth Games was quietly cancelled by the Indian sporting authorities, citing the uncertainty of Covid. The 2022 Commonwealth Archery and Shooting Championships, a medal-awarding sidecar event scheduled to take place in Chandigarh, India, in January will no longer be held. Archery is an optional sport in the Commonwealth Games and has appeared just twice on the programme in 21 editions – in Brisbane in 1982 and in Delhi in 2010 – though shooting has been included in all but one edition. (The 2010 compound competition was won by Bow’s own Duncan Busby.) In 2019, after archery and shooting failed to make it on to the sports programme for Birmingham 2022, a furious Indian Olympic Association started rattling sabres. The Birmingham organisers,…

Many experienced barebow archers can find it a little overwhelming when shopping for or tuning arrows. When we buy equipment, we want to buy the best available and to find that ‘perfect match’. Selecting arrows for recurve or compound is relatively straightforward and formulaic but for barebow it is much more down to the individual. This is not because barebows want to stand out, it is simply that there are many more variables involved in barebow shooting. Firstly, we do not have a clicker that controls our draw length or use a multitude of aiming combinations for different distances, which can affect the arrow’s trajectory and flight. What barebow shooting requires is a good understanding of your shooting form and the specifics of your equipment set-up. If you are unsure…

YOU’VE HAD AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY SO FAR, TELL US ABOUT PINNACLE MOMENTS, UPS AND DOWNS, TURNING POINTS. My pinnacle moments in archery so far have been winning the silver medal at the 2021 World Championships, winning three medals at the Pan American Games, and competing in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I believe a big turning point for me was stepping up my mental game, especially when I was competing on stage. HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTO ARCHERY? I first got into archery because of my parents. My father started his own archery retail shop in 1983, and archery has been in his family for generations. My mom and her dad used to hunt, so they were involved as well. I started shooting a basic bow when I was three…

Q I fitted a new string to my compound bow then laser aligned my set-up. However, since then I’ve found I need to adjust my sight so far to the right to centre my arrow that my peep no longer aligns with my scope. I shoot right-handed but I’m left-eye dominant, so I always shoot with my left eye closed. I don’t want to move my rest because that will change my centre-shot, so what can I do? A whenever you do any major work on your bow, like changing the strings, it’s always a good idea to take measurements of everything before you start. Things like brace height, axle length, peep height and nock position are vital to the tune of your bow and having these measurements to hand will…

Ever since archery ceased to be mandatory and became a competitive exercise with more and more advice to tax the eyes and muscles – and advances in equipment to tax the pocket – there have been books and magazines devoted to informing the already initiated of ways in which they might improve. This article will look at just a selection of this genre, from which there is much to choose. Central to any such discussion – and the title drawn upon by most subsequent authors in one way or another – is Roger Ascham’s 1544 Toxophilus, truly the foundation of all recreational longbow knowledge and advice. For all its enjoyment potential, the longbow had evolved as a weapon of war and, in 1590, a dissertation called Certain Discourses Military, by…