Archery

Archery is a sport where participants use bows to fire arrows at targets. Success is scored by measuring the archer's accuracy from various distances. In field archery, the archer moves; in target archery, the archer remains in one place, while the target is shifted.¹

Fast Facts

1. National Archery Association's first tournament: 1879, in Chicago, Illinois²
2. Target archery is most common³
3. First Olympic event: 1900⁴
4. Olympic medal count: Korea - 21, United States - 13, Russia - 9⁵
5. National Field Archery Association: Founded 1939⁶
6. Arrows in Olympic events can travel over 150 mph⁷

The Olympics (1900-1920)

The first archery competition in the Olympics was held in Paris in 1900. Hubert Van Innis of Beglium won two gold medals and one silver medal. Three women's events were added at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. Archery was not an event in the 1912 games. The sport returned to the 1920 games, but only three countries had participants. Hubert Van Innis was victorious again and increased his career medal count to nine.

The Olympics (1972-2000)

After 52 years archery was reinstated as an event for the Munich games in 1972. The United States team, led by Darrell Pace, won the gold at the 1976 games in Montreal. Pace also won the archery competition in Los Angeles in 1984. The women of South Korea won gold in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics, having set world records. Simon Fairweather won the first Olympic medal in archery for Australia in the 2000 games.⁴

Related Pages on Mahalo

Olympic Archery | Olympic Green Archery Field | US Olympic Archery 2008 | Olympic Winners 2008 | Olympics

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