Sports Equipment

Archery is a precision sport. It makes use of a bow and an arrow. The objective is to be able to shoot the arrow as close as possible to the archery target. It takes years of training and practice to be good at the sport.

Aside from having a keen eye, an archer must also have high concentration skills and a steady arm. In competitive archery, the archer must assume a correct stance where the feet are shoulder-width apart and the body is directly facing the target. The bow should be held in the hand opposite the archer’s dominant eye. The arrow is released by relaxing the fingers but keeping the arm steady.

There are many types of targets used in archery.

The materials that are used in targets are very different, they can be as simple as a sheet of paper, or made out of a heavy-duty laminated foam that can withstand target arrows and also broad-head arrows. There are targets that can be mounted on a bale of hay that are made out of a simple type of fiberglass and can be used over and over. There are also targets made out of burlap bags that are stuffed with hay or straw.

There are foam targets, institutional targets, and freestanding targets. For some targets the use of a target stand, or target easel are necessary.
The targets are marked with 10 evenly spaced concentric rings, which have scoring values from 1 to 10 assigned to them. The 10th ring can also be called the X ring for indoor competition. For outdoor competition the X ring is used as a tiebreaker. The archer getting the most X rings is the winner. There are also different size faces on the targets.

Remember…using the correct arrows will prolong the use of a target.

Shooting at targets in archery can be fun for both the beginner and the experienced if all the safety precautions are utilized.

There are different types of targets used in archery. There are targets for competition and you also have targets for field archery.

Target archery is the most popular form of archery - shooting at targets at set distances for accuracy. In target archery the targets should be placed in a safe area, in front of a hill or have some type of backstop so if the arrow misses it, it won’t fly too far past the target.

In field archery targets are placed in a wooded area at different distances. The natural surroundings of the woods help in the safty in shooting at field targets.

Using the proper equipment will make this sport more fun and a lot safer!

 Simple Strings

Most bow strings for compound bows or recurve bows today may be described as either simple, reverse -twisted, or looped.

Simple strings are made of any type fiber, and twisted in a single cord. These type of strings are used all over the world and are still effective today. They are fairly easy to make but weaker for their weight and may come apart if not kept under tension. They are normally attached to the bow with a single knot at each end.

Reverse-twisted strings

The traditional strings used in Europe and North America are the reverse twisted-strings. The materials that are mostly used our linen and hemp fiber. The reverse-twisted strings are made of separate bundles, each bundle twisted in one direction; then the entire group of bundles is then twisted in the opposite direction. The results tend to be stronger than the simple string or looped string. A further advantage is the full thickness of the string passes around the nocks where the wear is much greater. Additional threads may be added at the nocking point for the bow stave and for the arrow, which are spots that are likely to wear. The strings are usually secured to the bow by a knot on each end, by a timber hitch also known as the bowyers knot.

The “Femish” string has a leg-in loop at one end, which is easier than most knots to fit over the nock of the bow when stringing and unstringing. It is more troublesome to make, the short length towards one end, that will form the loop is reversed-twisted first. The Japanese bow string is made by reverse-twisting in different directions in the core and outer layers of the string.

Looped Strings are made of one or more continuous loops of material. Modern strings are often made as single continuous loop: this is then served(adding extra materal) to give final form. Disadvantages include a lesser amount of fiber at the ends, where wear is most likely.

Arrows used with a compound bow are a little different from the arrows used for a recurve bow. The shafts of the arrows used in a compound bow are usually made of aluminum, or a carbon fiber, or a combination of both. Because of the greater forces that a compound bow has, wooden arrows may break and cause injury to the shooters arm. Or the arrows may shatter because of the changes in the force applied to it during release. Manufacturers produce shafts of different stiffnesses and lengths in the same model to accommodate the different draw weights and draw lengths. Arrow stiffness is important in shooting accurately.

Arrow sizes vary greatly from 18 inches to 5 feet. However, most modern arrows are 2 1/2 to 3 feet long. The shaft is the primary structure of the arrow, to which the other components are attached. Traditional arrows were made from lightweight wood, bamboo or reeds, but modern shafts may be made from aluminum or carbon fiber reinforced plastic. The stiffness of the shaft is known as the spine, referring to how little the shaft bends when compressed. An arrow which has more spine bends less. In order to strike consistently, a group of arrows must be similarly-spined. Sometimes the shaft will be made of two different types of wood fastened together, which is known as a footed arrow. 

Footed arrows:

Footed arrows were used by both Europeans and Native Americans. Foot consists of a short length of hardwood near the head of the arrow with the remainder of the shaft being a softwood.

The arrowhead is the primary part of the arrow and the largest part in determining its purpose. Some arrows may simply use the sharpened tip of the solid arrow, but it is far more common for a separate arrowhead to be made, usually from metal, horn, or some other hard material.
Blunts are unsharpened heads used for target practice or shooting targets. Blunts are usually made from hard rubber or metal. Safety is still a precaution with blunthead arrows.

Target arrows are bullet-shaped with a sharp point design to penetrate the target but is easily removed without causing excessive damage.

Fletchings are found at the back of the arrow and provide a small amount of drag to stabilize the flight of the arrow, they are designed to keep the arrow pointed in the direction of travel.

Fletchings are normally made of goose or turkey feathers but are now often made of plastic. Fletchings may be straight, or arranged with a slight offset around the shaft of the arrow to guide and provide a slight rotation which improves accuracy. Most arrows have three feathers but some have four or even more. Fletchings usually range from 2 to 6 inches in length. Flight arrows intended to travel the maximum distance typically have very low fletching, hunting arrows with broadheads require long and high fletching to stabilize them against the aerodynamic effect of the head.

With conventional three-feather fetching, one feather is called the ”cock” feather, it is at a right angle to the nock, and is placed so that it will not contact the bow when the arrow is shot. However, many modern target archers have no ”cock” feather on their arrows, thus improving accuracy. Four-feather fletching has an advantage that there is no cock feather, so making nocking the arrow easier; this will help very young children to enjoy archery.

Target arrows can be used on both compond bows and recurved bows.

The compound bow was first introduced by a man named Holless Wilbur Allen.  It was in the year 1967 in the state of Missouri and for obvious reasons it became popular immediately.  The limbs of a compound bow are a lot tighter than the recurve or longbow which makes the compound boy more efficient than any of the other bows.

The compound bow uses a series of levering systems that gives the user an added edge.  These levers usually consist of cables and pulley that help to bend the string and give the archer the utmost power for his musculature exertion.  The compound bow has been a hunter’s best friend since 1967 and will continue to be until there is no more game left in the wild.

There are tons of advantages to the compound bow over other bows.  The biggest advantage is the power that you can achieve with a compound bow.  When the bow is drawn, the weight increases drastically at the peak and then it flies.  When the bow flies there is 65 to 85 percent of the force still retained.  There is one company that claims 99 percent of the force retained by their compound bows.  This is unheard of in a regular bow where the friction caused by the hand to the string will usually resolve itself by diminishing the power that is available to the bow.  Therefore, the impact of the compound bow is way more and it can penetrate where other bows will not try.

Opening ceremony

Main article: 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing will be held in the Beijing National Stadium, and begin at 8:00pm CST (12:00 UTC) on 8 August 2008. It has been announced that Canada’s Celine Dion and Taiwan’s Jay Chou would perform during the opening ceremony.

On July 21, NBC announced the Opening Ceremony would include performances by a cast of 15,000 and declared it would be the most spectacular Olympics Opening Ceremony ever produced.

Sports

This pictogram depicts Athletics.

Medals of the 2008 Summer Olympics: silver (left), gold (center), bronze (right)

The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens.

Overall 9 new events will be held, which include 2 from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women’s team foil and women’s team sabre will replace men’s team foil and women’s team epee.

The Beijing Organizing Committee have released pictograms of the 35 Olympic disciplines. This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram’s likeness to Chinese seal script.

The following are the sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses.

Written in part with Wikipedia:

A compound bow is a modern bow that uses a levering system, usually of cables and pulleys, to bend the limbs.

The limbs of a compound bow are usually much stiffer than those of a recurve bow or longbow. This limb stiffness makes the compound bow more energy efficient than other bows, but the limbs are too stiff to be drawn comfortably with a string attached directly to them. The compound bow has the string attached to the pulleys, one or both of which has one or more cables attached to the opposite limb. When the string is drawn back, the string causes the pulleys to turn. This causes the pulleys to pull the cables, which in turn causes the limbs to bend and thus store energy.