Some 50 years ago, there were a few hundred archers in the United States. Today there are 7.5 million, proof of the lure of the bow.
Although archery is a minor sport in America, the nation has world-class archers. "America has been at the top of archery since the 1950s," says Bill Stump, 64, of the Oriole Archers in Baltimore. "Our nation's secret is that you have to shoot your way into competition. Your can be the national champion, but the trials determine who goes. If your are not in the top four, you don't go. The British select their archers."
The major U.S. contribution to modern archery is the design of the bow, according to Stump, a former National Archery Association board member. "After World War II, American engineers looked at the bow and realized that the English longbow was not an efficient bow. So they adopted the Turkish recurve bow. As the technology of the materials improved, so did the bow. The bow I had in 1951, when I started, is nothing like my present bow."
Archery returned to the Olympics in 1972 after being eliminated in 1906. "The United States pressed for it and was instrumental in its return, along with the Federation Internationale de Tir a l'Arc [FITA] council," according to Stump. FITA holds a world championship biennially. "Then the United States won the men's gold in '72, '76 and '84. We didn't go to the Olympics in 1984, but I think we also won the women's in 1972 and 1976."
In a double FITA tournament, used in Olympic, world, and national events, 88 arrows plus 24 practice shots are taken. A bow is lifted and drawn at least 312 times. As the average man's Olympic-style recurve bow has a draw weight of 50 pounds, he pulls 15,600 pounds or 7.8 tons over the four-day tournament. The women pull an average draw weight of 34 pounds or 5.3 tons over four days.
As 10 points are scored for a hit in the center ring, a perfect single FITA round score is 1,440 points. But few archers break the elusive 1,300 mark. American archers Rick McKinney and Darrell Pace do it consistently. Reaching 1,300 means a hit in the bull's-eye gold 8 out of 10 times. With 144 shots, better than 100 arrows are fired into the gold from distances as short as the width of a tennis court to as long as the length of a football field.
Archery has never become a major American sport because it is not a popular spectator sport. "Yet an archery tournament is an interesting spectacle. If you get fifty or sixty multicolored targets in a row with their wind flags flying and pennants blowing and everyone dressed in white, it's an impressive sight,' says Stump.
He doubts whether archery will ever boom because "it's hard to do well. People get discouraged. They'll shoot a good score, then fall off. They get frustrated and try something else. I've seen them come and go. They spend hundreds of dollars on equipment, then just give it up."
A technical, precision sport
Ruth Rowe of McLean, Virginia, who began shooting in 1965 and shot in her last competition in 1985, says, "Archery is an individual sport; it has a low profile. It is
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