History of Archery
History of Archery Website – Click here
Archery at the Olympics – Click here
Archery at the Paralympics – Click here
History of World Archery – Click here
The worlds oldest archery event. There is a dispute about this.
If you believe the English its the “The Antient Silver Arrow – The Scorton Arrow” (1673) Click here.
A video of the 2016 Silver Arrow below – note the distance to the targets
If you believe the Scots its the the Musselburgh Silver Arrow (1603) Click here.
A video of the Royal Bodyguard of Scotland – the Royal Company of Archers – shooting the Musselburgh Silver Arrow. Maybe we need similar uniforms and feathers.
If you believe the Japanese its the Kyoto Sanjusangendo Temple tournament (1606) Click here.
This one is typically Japanese (think Takeshi’s Castle) and has mind boggling divisions and statistics. For example:
- The distance shot is 120m
- There are divisions for:
- “Most target hits with 1000 arrows” (that’s not a typo).
The 11 year old boy who won the 1827 competition hit the target 995 times
- The number of target hits in 12 hours (that’s not a typo either)
The 1774 winner shot 11,715 times. That’s an average of 16 arrows a minute for 12 hours with no break. And some modern archers struggle with 6 arrows in 5 minutes !
- The number of target hits in 24 hours (that’s also not a typo)
The 1686 winner hit the target with 8,133 of 13,053 arrows he shot. Think about that – it’s nearly 91 WA90/1440 rounds – you know, the ones that start about 9.00 am and finish about 3.30 with a one hour break for lunch. He was clearly not much of a shot as he missed 4,920 times. And most modern archers won’t shoot 144 arrow rounds because its too many arrows !
Below is a video showing the preparations for the womens event – check out the number of competitors
You probably have to give it to the Scots, Japan second and the Poms a distant third ! The Scots also claim their silver arrow awarded to the winner is the oldest trophy in world sport.