The first competition of the season for me was a shoot at Chippenham two weeks ago where I came 2nd overall after struggling with some issues shooting the new bow. I then spent the following week revisiting the set up and tune of my equipment and looked again at how best to adapt my technique to the bow. This was very productive and I felt much more confident this previous weekend when I travelled up to the National Sports Centre at Lilleshall, Shropshire for ArcheryGB's first of two selection shoots to decide which GB archers will attend the World Archery Championships in Copenhagen at the end of July.
The World Archery Championships are the biggest and most prestigious event in the archery calendar for a compound archer like myself (only recurve archery is currently in the Olympic Games) and occur every 2 years. Unlike our World Cup which is held every year and consists of a number of stages followed by a finals event, the World Championship is a single stage event and each country hosts domestic selection trials to determine which three of the nation's archers will represent the country. In the UK our governing body ArcheryGB are hosting a 2-stage selection. Last weekend was the first stage with a double 50 metre competition on the Saturday where archers with the required qualification scores from 2014 were narrowed down to the final 8. This proved to be a cold and wet competition with the wind causing a lot of issues for many of the archers. I managed to shoot strongly and finish the day in third place and was really encouraged with the way I was now shooting the new bow.
Day 2 of this selection shoot was a lovely looking but very difficult to shoot in day of blustery cold wind. At the end of the day the remaining 8 archers were to be whittled down to a final 6 who will compete at a final selection shoot in
June to decide the 3 archers to compete at the World Championships. To decide this we all had to shoot 14 head to head matches consisting of 15 arrows throughout the day in a round robin manner - over 200 competitive arrows in a strong gusting wind where you constantly knew that every arrow counted toward the final score and one badly shot arrow would probably mean elimination from the final selection shoot. I've never shot such a physically and mentally tough competition in my archery career to date, but over the course of the day I managed to win 11 out of my 14 matches (some by just 1 point!) to finish the day in joint first place. This has now qualified me for the final selection event to shoot against 5 other archers for one of the coveted 3 spots on the GB men's compound team for the World Championships. In addition, the top 4 archers from the weekend are to form the team to attend the Archery World Cup Stage 2 in Anatalya, Turkey next month which will provide us with invaluable experience just before the main Championship event. Turkey is an event I attended last year and I cannot wait to compete there again and try to build on my experience from last time and hopefully set myself up for a strong performance in June to secure a place on the World Championships team.
The World Archery Championships are the biggest and most prestigious event in the archery calendar for a compound archer like myself (only recurve archery is currently in the Olympic Games) and occur every 2 years. Unlike our World Cup which is held every year and consists of a number of stages followed by a finals event, the World Championship is a single stage event and each country hosts domestic selection trials to determine which three of the nation's archers will represent the country. In the UK our governing body ArcheryGB are hosting a 2-stage selection. Last weekend was the first stage with a double 50 metre competition on the Saturday where archers with the required qualification scores from 2014 were narrowed down to the final 8. This proved to be a cold and wet competition with the wind causing a lot of issues for many of the archers. I managed to shoot strongly and finish the day in third place and was really encouraged with the way I was now shooting the new bow.
Day 2 of this selection shoot was a lovely looking but very difficult to shoot in day of blustery cold wind. At the end of the day the remaining 8 archers were to be whittled down to a final 6 who will compete at a final selection shoot in
June to decide the 3 archers to compete at the World Championships. To decide this we all had to shoot 14 head to head matches consisting of 15 arrows throughout the day in a round robin manner - over 200 competitive arrows in a strong gusting wind where you constantly knew that every arrow counted toward the final score and one badly shot arrow would probably mean elimination from the final selection shoot. I've never shot such a physically and mentally tough competition in my archery career to date, but over the course of the day I managed to win 11 out of my 14 matches (some by just 1 point!) to finish the day in joint first place. This has now qualified me for the final selection event to shoot against 5 other archers for one of the coveted 3 spots on the GB men's compound team for the World Championships. In addition, the top 4 archers from the weekend are to form the team to attend the Archery World Cup Stage 2 in Anatalya, Turkey next month which will provide us with invaluable experience just before the main Championship event. Turkey is an event I attended last year and I cannot wait to compete there again and try to build on my experience from last time and hopefully set myself up for a strong performance in June to secure a place on the World Championships team.