Let’s take a look at archery range and other details. The distance to an Olympic archery target is determined by the World Archery Federation, which is the recognized governing body for all rules of archery and the Olympic Games. The official Olympic archery distance is 70 meters from the archers, but distances may vary in other archery competitions.
The target in Olympic archery is located 70 meters away for people who fire with a recurve bow. For archers with a compound bow, the target is located 50 meters away. In both cases, the target contains five rings, and points are associated with each ring layer.
For indoor archery, the target is 18 or 25 meters away and measures 40 or 60 cm. Archery targets come in different sizes depending on the equipment used and the distance.
How Archery Targets Are Typically Distanced
Typically in archery, athletes shoot at fixed targets at varying distances using bows such as recurve, no bow, compound bow, and longbow. Using a recurve bow with bow-specific arrows, competitors shoot at targets at a predetermined distance. Both men and women will use recurve bows to shoot targets at 70 meters, which is approximately 77 yards. Each target has 10 scoring rings – from 1 to 10 points divided into five colors.
For recurve bows and 70m distances used in Olympic archery, a 122cm face target will be used. Multiple archers will shoot the same 122cm (curved) or 80cm (compound) target for 720 shots.
Round 720 consists of seventy-two arrows, each giving up to ten points, fired at a distance of 70 meters (approximately 77 yards) for recurve archers and 50 meters for compound archers. The 720 cartridge, also known as the “Olympic Round”, consists of 6 ends of 12 arrows each fired at 70 meters for an Olympic recurve bow at a standard 122 cm 10-ring target (or 50 meters for a 10-ring compound bow)
How Olympic Archery Differs from Other Forms
While world archery competitions include both recurve and compound bows, the Olympics are different. At the Olympics, Paralympics, World Archery Championships, and Hyundai World Archery Championships, recurve bows are the only acceptable bows.
While there are many types of archery, only the recurve bow is part of the Olympics. Currently, Tokyo 2020 has 64 men and 64 women competing in individual, team and mixed team archery events.
In Olympic archery, the standard range of the 1440 cartridge is 70 meters, but the range is 30 to 90 meters for men and 30 to 70 meters for women. Today, the standard distance for Olympic archery is 70 meters, which equates to 76.5529 yards. In Olympic archery, the target and ray (where the shooter will shoot) are 70 meters (about 76 yards) apart.
For outdoor shooting, the arrows are getting closer and closer: in the Gents 1440 cartridge, for example, the shooter shoots three dozen at 90 m (98 yd), then three at 70 m (77 yd), then at 50 Shoot three dozen meters (55 yards), then three dozen at 30 meters (33 yards). The archer fires 3 or 6 arrows from each end, depending on the type of bullet.
How Archers Approach Their Turn
Archers focus on hitting the target’s center ring with the arrow. Sights help archers aim at a target that can be moved vertically or horizontally depending on the weather. In addition to bows and arrows, the US team uses custom scopes and binoculars to accurately hit these 70-meter targets.
If you’ve ever seen an Olympic archery match, you’ve seen archers using multiple stabilizers. Unlike combination archers, Olympic archers shoot with their fingers, and usually with fingers of one form or another. Most Olympic archers use arm and chest guards to prevent the bowstring from snagging on their shirts and affecting the arrow’s position.
Olympic archers use what are known as recurve bows, where the curve of the bow ends naturally moves away from the archer unless drawn back towards them. A number of wheels and pulleys are used by bows in compound archery which help to reduce the draw pressure or weight of the bow on the archer. According to the rules of the International Olympic Committee and in some small tournaments, in the case of a dodgeball, the archer must move away from the shooting line and keep the bow in the air.
Rules for International Archery Competitions
International outdoor competition rules allow 4 minutes for 6 arrows on the furthest target and 2 minutes for 3 arrows on the nearest target. 1440 outdoor rounds, the time limit for two shorter distances is 2 minutes for 3 arrows and 4 minutes for 6 arrows for the longer distance.
For 1440 rounds outside, the archer has 4 minutes to shoot 6 arrows at the two longer distances and 2 minutes to shoot 3 arrows at the remaining two shorter distances. For Imperial cartridges, the standard internal distance is 20 yards (18 m), firing 5 dozen arrows in a round known as the Portsmouth Bullet.
In addition to the skills required to hit a target from 70 meters away, archers have a 40 second time limit to fire each arrow, meaning the Olympian Hawkeye faces tremendous psychological pressure every round. There are also claims that Olympic archers shoot up to 5,000 arrows per week, which, when calculated, is impractical.
Luckily, the idea is not to shoot as much as Olympic archers, but to shoot the right amount of arrows to match and develop your skill level. Few people can consistently shoot this far with a compound bow, so watching Olympic athletes shoot bullseye arrows from this distance is simply impressive.
A skilled and experienced archer can reliably hit a stationary target at a distance of 30m to 60m. Some archery competitions are more like what you would experience in combat, most notably “IFAA 3-D Hunting” uses animal-sized targets placed at unmarked distances. Archery hunters have their own competition called “Archery” and from that we can get a reasonable expectation of accuracy.