Although there is a general rule in the archery community where no style of archery is
better than another, some people have a view on modern
archery and its equipment that is kind of negative. This is particularly true for
the Olympic style of archery. Traditionalists will look at their sights and stabilizers and go
"if they're meant to be the best, how come they need so many gadgets to make it easier?"
[The Misconception]
I think this is a huge misconception about modern archery and
why its equipment has been adapted the way it has. I want to address this perception of
"Olympic archery", and why claims that it's "easier" aren't quite true.
There's one very important thing I want to clarify: There's no such thing as Olympic Archery.
Now, that may be confusing. You see archery at the Olympics.
Yes. You see bows marketed as "Olympic" bows, people talk about shooting Olympic-style.
No. Olympic Archery is not actually a thing.
The only reason why it's called Olympic archery is because it's the event that
most people recognize modern archery from. It's a misnomer because what you
see in the Olympics is *one* specific discipline.
It's similar to how "Olympic Taekwondo" is the style regulated by the World
Taekwondo Federation, as compared to the International Taekwondo Federation or ITF.
[Disciplines and Classifications]
Archery, as a competitive sport, has numerous disciplines and classifications.
Disciplines refer to different kinds of events. They include
Outdoor Target archery, Indoor Target archery, Clout archery, and Field archery
being some of the main events. Classifications cover the kinds of equipment that can be used.
That includes Freestyle Recurve, Compound, Barebow Recurve, and so on.
There are also different rounds that can be shot ranging from the full
90m FITA round to 18m indoor rounds. What you see in the Olympic Games is
Outdoor Target Archery, shooting the Olympic Round, Freestyle Recurve.
Now, this may sound awfully specific, but it's important to note that
this is only *one* possible event in *one* discipline of *one* classification that could run.
There are other events that are run in different disciplines and
classifications at national and world level as well as club and state level.
Archery in the Olympic program only features one discipline.
This is in contrast to events organized by the International Shooting Sports Federation.
The shooting events in the Olympic program include
10m air pistol, 10m air rifle, 25m rapid fire pistol, 50m pistol, 50m rifle prone, 50m rifle three position, trapshooting, double trap shooting, skeet shooting...
There are 9 different events for shooting in the Olympics
Archery only has one. Because of this, people have generally
understood this one event to represent "Olympic Archery", and the industry has
adapted to this misconception by marketing their products for
"Olympic archers". Because this is the only kind of archery that many non-archers are familiar
with, the "Olympic Archery" has become the word that describes all kinds of
sport-style archery and equipment. There are other events that could be run.
The big one that is being pushed at the moment is the Compound classification.
The World Championships and the World Cups feature both recurve and compound classifications,
and both are highly competitive. It's up to the IOC to decide whether they want
another archery event and add compound to the program. There are arguments in favor and
against, but when you consider the number of similar ISSF shooting events, different
weight classes in judo, wrestling, and boxing, and different classifications in sailing
and rowing, it would make sense for Olympic archery to include both recurve and compound.
[Archery as an Olympic Sport]
Archery hasn't always been the form we see today.
The original events from the early Olympic Games, dating from the 1900 Paris Games,
used equipment that was traditional, there were several different
events, and it wasn't regulated by an international association.
Archery disappeared from the Olympic program in 1920. Between 1972-1988 archery
competition became regulated under FITA, now known as World Archery, and they
use a standardized round: the FITA 1440. This is basically the same for the
competitions used in club and state level. Everyone shoots at the same time on the
same field and the highest score wins. The problem with this format is that it's
not spectator-friendly. If you're not sure what this looks like, check out the
archery competitions I've recorded on my channel. It's a cycle of shooting,
scoring, shooting, scoring, and so on. It's not really a competitive environment
even though people are trying to score their best. Another problem is that in most
competitions the scores themselves aren't really competitive.
There is a huge spread in the field, and it's virtually impossible to make a
come-from-behind win because you're depending on the people above you to
make a mistake. Since there's no way for you to exceed the maximum number of points.
From 1992 onwards, the Olympic Round was used. After a qualification
process using a FITA round, competitors are placed in a one-on-one knockout
match with the higher scoring archer winning the match and proceeding to the next round.
This provided more of a competitive sport as the archer had more chance of
proceeding into the final rounds by beating one person at a time rather than
trying to keep ahead of a full field. This was controversial because the winning
archer wasn't necessarily the best archer on the day. It was the person who managed to
shoot better than a handful of people in match play. The final change was in
London 2012 when the set points replaced the overall score. So archers would receive
points based on whether they scored higher in that particular end. The finals
were decided by set points or a shoot off. This allowed archers to make those
come-from-behind wins. So, if an archer had a very poor first set, they could still win by
shooting better in the following sets. Knowing that archery has adapted to
become more competitive and more spectator friendly is the key to
understanding why Freestyle Recurve was chosen as the only representative discipline.
[Freestyle Recurve]
Firstly, it's important to define "freestyle" or what most know as Olympic
archery. Technically, the "freestyle" or "open" discipline allows you to use any
equipment that is within regulations. This includes using sights, weights, and stabilizers.
You don't have to use sights if you don't want to, but, of course,
practically every archer does. You may see more variation at club level where
some archers will use sights but won't use stabilizers, but at a competitive level
the equipment is fairly consistent. This is quite similar to the freestyle event
in swimming. Technically you can use any regulated
stroke in freestyle. You can use butterfly or breast stroke because
technically freestyle itself is not a stroke.
What you see swimmers do in freestyle is actually the front crawl, which is a
technique developed from older strokes. Because the front crawl was a relatively
modern development, I'm talking early 1900s,
it supplanted the traditional strokes and swimmers weren't overwhelmingly positive.
Over time it was recognized as being faster and more competitive and has been
universally adopted since as the freestyle stroke. Similar to how in
archery Freestyle Recurve has been adapted to become more competitive. In archery, in
order to increase scores and close the competitive gap, the use of sights and
stabilizers became the norm. Before this archery competitions were mostly
"Instinctive", and the rules did not allow you to use the point-of-aim techniques like
"string walking." Any archer can tell you today that even after years of training at
instinctive shooting, there are times when you simply just can't hit the target.
This is an inherent reason why "instinctive" or even "barebow" shooting is generally not seen
at the highest levels of world competition. It's much more difficult to
ensure consistent groupings and missing the target is quite normal.
This, arguably, makes it less fun to watch. It would be like watching a tennis match
we're both players kept on missing serves. And here's the thing
that usually gets people. Adding sights and stabilizers does not make the act of
shooting any easier. The technique, for the most part, remains
the same. Drawing the bow doesn't become easier. Releasing doesn't become easier.
Adding the accessories only makes it easier to be more consistent. Yes, this does mean
it's easier to score higher, but that means
[Expectations]
with higher scores comes higher expectations. This is where most people, I think,
misunderstand the reason behind freestyle or Olympic-style archery.
The archer still has to get the arrow on target. They're shooting at longer distances in a competitive scenario,
and they're trying to get the highest score out of all their arrows. Even at the top level of competition
archers can still miss. Though more often they might just hit a blue or red.
If this was an Instinctive or Barebow event, then many of the shots wouldn't even go near
the target. Of course, you would expect someone using sights and stabilizers
to achieve tighter groupings over longer distances.
This is the reason why, in lower level competitions, Barebow shooters usually shoot
at a closer distance, so that they can be competitive with each other.
Open Freestyle Recurve shooters shoot against each other. Compound shooters only
compete against each other. As long as the archer is competing against someone in the
same classification it's not an unfair advantage.
Everyone you are shooting against is held against the same measuring stick, and
the rounds that are shot are meant to push the archer to higher levels of focus and consistency.
It doesn't matter which classification
you shoot in, you're still competing against yourself. One of the things I often
hear is the claim that Olympic archery takes less skill, and that a traditional
Instinctive shooter has more skill. "Skill", applied across different classifications,
is not something that can be correlated. This is like comparing someone who
competes as a freestyle swimmer against a breast stroke swimmer. They both require
skill to compete in their respective events. The freestyle swimmer will swim
faster than a breast stroke swimmer just as a freestyle shooter will score higher than a
barebow shooter, and there's often this challenge that's thrown around: take the
sight off an Olympic archer and they'll lose against an Instinctive shooter.
Okay, that's probably true, but it's also a false argument. You're taking someone
out of their specialization and expecting them to compete equally.
Even the playing field and see if your argument still holds up. If the instinctive
shooter has five years of instinctive archery experience, give the Olympic archer
five years to train instinctive shooting. In fact, the Olympic archer can probably
acquire the same amount of proficiency in half the time because they already have
the foundation skills, and they just need to train with a different method of
shooting, and the opposite holds true with instinctive archers using sights.
They won't automatically shoot better with sights. In fact, if anything, they will
shoot worse because it goes against what they've been trained to do. Give the same
amount of time and training and they'll certainly shoot just as proficiently as
someone who's a freestyle archer. I may be rubbing some instinctive shooters the
wrong way here, but I see this one sided superiority complex everywhere, and
it's wrong. Adding a sight onto a bow does not make
it easier to shoot, nor does it show lesser skill. What this changes is expectation.
There's less excuse for a freestyle archer to be inconsistent because their scores
should be higher. Judge them on their form, not their
equipment. In fact, if you're going to criticize equipment, you may as well criticize
the use of carbon arrows because these have a *much* larger effect over long
range performance. The same can be said for recurve shooters who criticize compound
bows for being "too easy." It may be true that it is easier to be
consistent with a compound bow in a shorter amount of time, but the
expectations are much higher. It's much harder to succeed in compound
competition because the skill gap is so narrow.
In short, don't define an archer's skill based on the equipment they use. People choose
certain styles and classifications because that's the sort of competition they
want to participate in. Some people want to develop their skills as Barebow or
Instinctive shooters which is a much harder style to become consistent in.
Others want to participate in a higher scoring event where the competition
is much tighter. It's not about skill, it's about expectations.
[Conclusion]
To sum up, "Olympic Archery" isn't a style of archery in itself. It's actually just one event out of many
disciplines and classifications an archer could choose to compete in. It is,
however, the only one to make it onto the Olympic program. Olympic archery has
adopted the format and equipment it uses now in order to make the field more
competitive and more spectator-friendly. An Olympic archer does not have less
skill than other styles of archery. They are expected to score higher in a
competitive format. The reason why instinctive archery is not used as a
competitive discipline is that it takes longer for people to learn, and far fewer
people can reach the level where they can be competitive against each other.
Not every Olympic shooter is Brady Ellison. Not every compound shooter is Mike Schloesser. Not every instinctive shooter is Byron Ferguson.
If you're going to make comparisons between styles, remember to frame the context, and remember that
no style is inherently better than another.
Anyway, I hope you found this interesting. This is NUSensei.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.