All About Archery
Visions of Robin Hood splitting a rival’s arrow may flash through your mind as you watch this Olympic event. At this distance, the chance of splitting an arrow is slight or, perhaps, impossible, but that won’t prevent you from imagining it happen.
How Does Archery Work?
Archery is a relatively simple sport. Line up 70 meters from a target, stand still, and shoot at it. In concentric rings, where your arrow lands determines how many points you score. The bullseye at the center is only 4.8 inches wide and an arrow there gives the archer who shot it (or their team,) ten points. The farther an arrow is from the center, the fewer points it gets. Many arrows are shot, and each score is added up. When all the arrows are gone, whoever or whichever team has the most points, wins. Archers or teams are matching in single elimination games and keep shooting as long as they keep winning matches.
Why do People Like Watching Archery?
I can’t blame you if the idea of sitting still watching other people stand still and shoot arrows seems dull. All I can say, is that Olympic archery is surprisingly mesmerising most of the time. And, if a match is close at the end, it can be surprisingly exciting. Archery is an activity that requires complete calm to succeed at, so it’s interesting to watch what happens as archers struggle to remain calm with an Olympic medal on the line.
Check out some highlights from the 2012 Olympics:
What are the different events?
Archery has men’s and women’s individual and team events.
How Dangerous is Archery?
If you got in the way of anyone who was shooting, it would be pretty dangerous!! Otherwise, it’s completely safe.
What’s the State of Gender Equality in Archery?
Aside from the qualification target being ever-so-slightly lower for women (600 instead of 630), this sport has complete gender equality. Maybe it will be one of the first to get rid of gender all together.
Links!
Bookmark the full Olympics schedule from NBC. Archery is from Friday, August 5 to Friday, August 12.
Read more about diving on the official Rio Olympics site.