Olympic Archery: A Brief History
When people think about bows and arrows, many people think about bow hunting as a bobby and a sport. However, there is a long history for archery. If you go back in history, you can see bows and arrows in Olympic games. They were not used for bow hunting, but for competition.
During the first ever Olympic games held in Greece, archery was not part of the roster of official games at all. But if you take a look into the history of Olympic archery, you would see that the sport has been held for more than a thousand years already. Thus, there could be that strong possibility that Olympic archery has been in the circuit for that long now.
Olympic archery for the Men’s Division was first launched in 1900. A short four years later, Olympic archery for the Women’s Division was also launched. Sadly, uniformity was not established, as to rules and regulations for the Olympic event. This eventually led to Olympic archery being dropped from the roster of official events in the year 1920. In 1931, the FITA, or the Federation Internationale de Tira l’Arc was established. This is actually the official governing body of the sport in the global perspective. Over the years, FITA and its members debated within themselves in the hopes of establishing common ground for the official rules of Olympic archery. It took them quite a number of years actually. In time, the participating countries have reached a common ground on the rules, but this was not enough to get Olympic archery right back on the platter. In fact, it was not until 1972 that Olympic archery made it back into the official roster. The Olympic games then were held at Munich. In 1988, Olympic archery expanded into team competitions, aside from the usual individual events.
For Olympic archery, it is actually the recurve bow that has gained the reputation of being the official bow being used. Olympic archers are very careful upon releasing arrows from this type of bow because the arrows can travel as fast as 150 mph when released from the recurve bow. The bows themselves are very sleek in appearance, boasting of wood, graphite, and fiberglass. The bows also have stabilizers that are used in maintaining the straight course of the arrows as they are released. The strings of the bow are also made from the same material that comprises Kevlar. You can then just imagine how fast the arrows can travel when released from Kevlar strings! The arrows used in the Olympics should be made of either carbon graphite or aluminum. These are the only arrows that make it into the Olympics. Just by looking at all these fancy gear and equipment, you can safely say that the whole package would cost you more than a thousand bucks!
