Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 163 i Bow International

Well, the nights are drawing in and the time for archery is getting shorter, although the field season, taking up a lot of your weekends out there, is just getting started. In this month’s Bow, our cover star is Johanna Klinger of Germany (thanks to Malcolm Rees for the picture). It was part of a well-attended and beautifully organised European Youth Championships at Lilleshall, the home of British archery. Bow managed to pop along to catch the team finals, which turned out to be a special day for GBR on the field. Great thanks to Jon Nott and his team. Elsewhere in the magazine, we’ve got two barebow features for you, a classic on clicker work and another brilliant analysis from Dr James Park on real skill levels. We take…

Great Britain’s Ella Gibson shot 1,417 out of a possible 1,440 points to beat Toja Ellison’s double-50 world record by two. Gibson shot 72-arrow qualifying rounds of 707 and 710 points at Cleadon Archers on 30 August. “It’s a different mindset, working through 144 arrows to break a record, as you need to pace yourself and your concentration,” said the 22-year-old compounder. “You can’t give it your all from the get-go or you just won’t have enough mental energy left by the end.” Gibson, who has won every major event she has entered in 2022, previously broke the European record for the 72-arrow qualifying round at the third stage of this year’s Hyundai Archery World Cup, with 712 out of 720 points.…

Carol-Anne Seez is an international barebow archer from Great Britain. Having battled with mental health issues and ADHD, Carol-Anne persevered and is now one of GB’s finest in the discipline – an international success, and an all-round lovely person. She gave this personal interview about her journey through the sport. THE BEGINNING I never could imagine where this journey would take me. I started archery in 2015. For my 40th birthday my parents bought me a lightweight bow, a Win and Win RXT, believing it was best due to joint-pain issues. I was hooked and enjoyed training alongside my family. Soon, poor health caught up with me and I was shooting on a cocktail of painkillers. Archery felt like the ideal escape for me, to live in the moment, empty…

It is useful to have a means of comparing an archer’s scores at one distance, or for one round, with those at a different distance, or for a different round. To do this, it is desirable that the method is based on sound mathematics rather than ad-hoc means. Archery Australia developed such a system in the mid-1970s. I refined it using the results from several major international events in 2013. An archer’s arrows are distributed on the target very close to normal, both horizontally and vertically. Hopefully, the centre of the group, both horizontally and vertically, is in the centre of the target. While the group sizes horizontally and vertically might not be the same, assume they are the same for simplicity. Both horizontally and vertically, the size of the…

The British outdoor circuit for target archers tends to run from March to October, weather permitting, with the main events taking place in the height of summer. I have been chasing the circuit for as long as I can remember – apart from the Covid years – and every year I suffered from burnout, and went through all the highs and lows of the different shoots. Here are some of the most common problems you might face as a competitive archer. One of the most common problems outdoors are the physical symptoms of allergies. “Stay indoors” is the advice for hayfever sufferers, but that is not possible for an outdoor sport. Instead, I suggest washing your hands and face as often as you can, use antiseptic gels for your hands,…

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CHANG HYEJIN RETIRES Twice an Olympic gold medallist, the Rio 2016 Olympic individual and team champion Chang Hyejin has decided to retire from competitive archery. The 35-year-old Chang has multiple world and Asian Games medals to go with her two Olympic golds. She will also be remembered for destroying received wisdom – not least among the Korean archery establishment – about required height and strength for archery athletes; just over 5ft tall, she became Olympic champion using a recurve bow that weighed just 39lb on the fingers. Chang’s decision to step away from the sport follows recent retirements from Lisa Unruh of Germany, Linda Ochoa-Anderson of the USA and Mexico, and three-time Olympian Juan-Carlos Stevens of Cuba. “Retirement is now real. I learned the joys and challenges of archery, and…

A team of archaeologists in a tiny corner of Norway have been digging some remarkable things out of the ground recently, including an arrow that has been lost in the ice for around 1,500 years. It’s not the first such arrow they’ve found. Indeed, for a few years the location of the site, a large patch of ice called Langfonne, was so rich in archery treasures that the team called it the ‘secret arrow site’. More than 200 arrows have been found in the wider region in the past 15 years, carbon dated over a vast range of years. The earliest are an astonishing 6,000 years old. The most recent discovery was a well-preserved leaf-shaped arrowhead made out of iron, which was still attached to its shaft with sinew and…

For recurve archers, the clicker can be a love/hate relationship. Nearly every international recurve archer shoots with a clicker, so why, and how, can it cause so many issues? Why is there so much trouble in such a small piece of equipment? Sometimes – a little pedantically – called a ‘draw length indicator’, the clicker is certainly one of the simplest innovations to come to target archery since its introduction at the end of the 1950s. It helps to keep a consistent shot (provided it is used properly) and gives the correct draw length each time. Some archers may find they stumble across issues with a clicker in their archery career, and it is never far from any discussion about target panic. Doing clicker drills could help eliminate any hang-ups…

Those archers who already use one will know and appreciate the ‘conventional’ quick release systems for stabilisers. For recurve archers, anything that speeds up the process of assembly is good. No more screwing the long threaded rods in and out when setting up and dismantling the bow; just a quick turn and the stabiliser is in place. It also helps to stop the irritating habit of stabilisers coming loose at the wrong moment. The principle of a quick release is pretty simple. A larger sleeve is screwed into the threaded bushing for the rod or onto a V-bar. This sleeve has a kind of recess into which a bolt is inserted; this bolt has a hole on the side with a 5/16inch thread to screw it onto the thread of…

Chula Vista is the training centre that is home to USA Archery’s Resident Athlete Program, a residential facility that is designed to train the next generation of American Olympic champions. It is part of a larger campus called the Elite Athlete Training Center that trains athletes in eight different Olympic sports. Based in the very south of sunny California, not far from the Mexican border the USA Archery Team and squad have access to indoor and outdoor Olympic distance facilities. It is also home to Ki Sik Lee, one of the most successful archery coaches in the world. But there are many questions around the Resident Athlete Program, how it works, how to get selected and what a typical week looks like. We caught up with Catalina G’Noriega, who has…

IF YOU ARE GOING TO A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP AND HAVE A LONG JOURNEY, WHEN DO YOU ARRIVE? DO YOU ALWAYS STAY OVERNIGHT AT THE VENUE OF THE COMPETITION? In most cases the shooting and competition will start in the morning, so I will arrive the day before. I always try to arrive with enough time to have dinner in peace, and to not be rushed. Basically, I like to time my arrival in such a way that there is minimal stress. Because the competition will usually have enough of that. DO YOU DO ANY TRAINING IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE COMPETITION? If I can, I usually do a small training session of about 50-70 arrows on the day before. This training is just a matter of shooting loosely, and to strengthen the…

As a barebow archer I personally find no need to employ any of the sear techniques, though I do teach them when requested. Many of my fellow barebow archers have expressed a keen interest in sear techniques, some claiming it can cure target panic! Many seemed to cling to the hope it would work for them, but so far none has managed to achieve consistent results. I wondered why that was and decided to carry out my own investigation. And it soon became apparent that there is a lot of conflicting information: many were unclear on what a ‘sear’ was, where they can be found, and whether they need to use one. Though this article is intended mainly for barebow archers, I think it is important for all archers to…

‘I mean, whoever wins, wins. It’s archery; it’s not life and death.’ I So said USA archer Zach Garrett before his last eight tie with teammate Brady Ellison at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Ellison won, and went on to take the individual bronze. Garrett had already won a silver medal with Ellison in the team round, so he would not leave the Olympics empty-handed. But it was a good illustration of a relaxed way to approach a competitive match in a competition where many favourites fell by the wayside. Often at this time of year, archers begin to evaluate their competitive season. Has their performance lived up to expectations? Did they achieve all of their goals? What do they hope to achieve moving forward? It’s a rare athlete that…

Lilleshall, the home of Archery GB, once again played host to a major championship, with the long awaited appearance of the European Youth Championships in August. It’s not the first youth championships held there, by any means. Way back in 2004, the World Youth Championships staged at Lilleshall was won by Carla Frangilli, with future megastar Lisa Unruh in third. Indeed, looking back, the youth events medal table is invariably studded with major stars of the future. The logistics of organising an event with over 300 athletes from 30 different countries, and a finals field with an astonishing 20 podiums to organise, schedule and medal up, almost beggars belief. Jon Nott, as ever, organised a well-drilled army of volunteers to marshal Europe’s top youths around the huge Lilleshall grounds. The…

On 30 December 1969 the US Patent Office published patent no. 3,486,495 for an archery bow with draw force multiplying attachments. An inventor named Holless Wilbur Allen (1909-1979) had applied for it three years earlier, after spending much time experimenting with different designs in order to develop a bow able to store more energy and accelerate an arrow with greater speed, without the need for a longer draw or more force to hold the string in a fully drawn position. In his application, he claimed that “the archer’s bow has not changed in basic design since the development of the long bow many centuries ago”, which is essentially true, even if the long bow had been in use for several millennia. A bow works like a leaf spring, which is…