Olympic Archery

The first appearance of archery as a sport in the Olympics came in the summer games of 1900 and was held at games in Paris of 1904, 1908 and 1920. . Archery was then dropped from the Olympic games until 1972 in Munich, team competition was later added in 1988. There are four events held during Olympic archery: Men's Individual, Women's Individual, Men's Team and Women's Team. Until 1992 Archers would shoot a double FITA round of 288 arrows, the winner decided by the highest total score. The competition was then changed to its current format which is head-to-head elimination for the top 64 competitors.http://www.archeryweb.com/archery/olympics.htm

Format for men and women is the same in individual and team competition and consists of a ranking round, followed by the Olympic round. In ranking archers shoot 72 arrows at a target 70 meters away in twelve ends of six arrows, the best score being 720. The Olympic round is separated into elimination and final rounds, final rounds consist of quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. There are 64 competitors who rank and advance to elimination, then the finals start when it has been reduced to eight archers. The losers of the semifinals shoot in the bronze medal match and the two winners shoot in the gold medal matchhttp://www.archeryweb.com/archery/olympics.htm.

Each archery team consists of 3 archers, and in all matches the team shoots three ends of nine arrows each. General rules of the game stay the same in ranking rounds, and the top 16 teams are selected to move on. Each archer is allowed 3 minutes to finish their end. The eighth-finals include 16 teams shooting 8 matches. The quarter-finals then consist of 8 winning teams shooting at the same time in four different matches. Semi-finals has four winning teams and the losers of the semi-finals shoot for the bronze medal, winners shoot for goldhttp://www.archeryweb.com/archery/olympics.htm

Results for the 2008 Beijing Olympics are as follows