Archery Target Shooting and the Olympics
Chuck Holloway

Archery target shooting has been a popular hobby for many people. Some of the more competitive archery enthusiasts test their skill in archery competitions that are popular the world over and have been popular for hundreds of years—at least as long as archery as been a viable means of hunting.

Archery target shooting can be seen in local competitions as well as national ones. In addition to being a highly disciplined activity to compete in, audiences find it a fun spectator sport. The popularity of the sport is enough that numerous archery target tourneys have aired on ESPN and Sportchannel America among other major cable channels as well. However, the biggest archery competition is, or course, the archery target events held at the Olympic Games.

Under the rules of Olympic archery target shooting, the competitor stays about 80 yards away from the target and competes in four different shooting events. The target that the archers shoot at is the traditional circular bulls eye target where each separate ring is a assigned a point value with the bulls eye being worth ten points.

Olympic archery shooting has the dubious distinction of having once been ‘barred’ from TV. In the 2000 Olympics, ‘combat’ sports were pushed off of network TV. Boxing was relegated to MSNBC. Judo was dropped altogether as was target shooting. The feeling was that no one at the network wanted to have an injury on live TV.

Okay: Can someone explain why the Winter Olympics have no problems airing skiing and snowboarding? To injure someone in target archery is pretty tough. The person would have to stand in between the archer and the target, all while not being noticed by anyone, and on live TV. And somehow I doubt many archers in the Olympics ever shot themselves in the foot. This is a weird world we live in. Despite the Olympic goofiness, archery target shooting manages to thrive on.

Chuck Holloway is and avid archery fanatic with 18 years of hunting experience. He is a lifetime member of the North American Hunting Club and an active member of the NRA. Chuck has a strong passion for the outdoors and enjoys capturing the details of the hunt in his journals.