See all videos on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/archerytv

See pictures of the first worldcup event in the ai gallery.

Prince William of Wales (2007)

As you may remember, I already wrote a little bit about disabled archery in January. It is possible to do archery with several different types of handicaps and as seen at the Para Archery World Championships 2009, blind archery is getting more common among the different types of disabled archery.  Yesterday, the British BBC just published some pictures of Prince William of Wales having an archery lesson – also blind.

During a visit to the new specialist centre for blind ex-service men and women “St Dunstan’s” in Llandudno, he took the time to try this advanced level of archery. To simulate blindness, he put on a blindfold that was given by the former private hospital as part of the lesson. Even though Prince William got instructions by blind archer Clive Jones, he apparently was not able to hit the target.

I am not allowed to publish any of the pictures on archeryimages, so here is a link to the BBC:

View the pictures on news.bbc.co.uk

But archery in general is an interesting sport to show in slow motion. Caused by the fracture of a second that decides about a perfect in-death-center ten or lousy 7 points in archery, it is always nice to see what is actually going on in this crucial instant of time. As men is not able to see it, people in archery around the world have put effort in slow motion videos over and over again. One of the most famous footage was produced by Werner Beiter whose videos from the movie “Der Weg ins Zentrum” (The way to center) are still available for download. In 1997, he opened the “Werner & Iris Center” in Dauchingen, Germany where top athletes from all over the world have the possibility to practise and improve their shooting with the help of slow motion video. The visitor gallery of the “Werner & Iris Center” is basically a who’s is who of international archery and shows how important slow motion video footage is for high-level archery.

Some days ago I found nice slow motion videos made by former U.S. Olympic Archery Team Coach Lloyd Brown at youtube. He also specialised in high speed video analysis and was not just able to produce this footage under “laboratory conditions” but live, at the practise field during the Archery World Championships 2007 in Leipzig. These videos show archers like Natalia Valeeva of Italy or Sung-Hyun Park of Korea and are awesome shots:

http://www.archeryimages.net/gallery/index.php?action=pictures&cid=375

To present you one example, here is a video showing Natalia Valeeva:

Archery is a very open sport when it comes to disabled persons. As far as I know, it is the only Olympic Sport where disabled persons can (successfully) compete with “normal” athletes. This is valid for physically disabled persons as well as for mentally disabled ones. A good example for such a disabled athlete is the German Mario Oehme, who won the Paralympic Games 1996 and 2004. He has been in a wheelchair after a mining accident in the 1980s and is in the German Paralympic National Team since 1993. But he is one of the archers that is actually able to compete against non-disabled archers and defeat them on a very high level. He proved that on several German Championships in the past.

Even though those positive examples can be role models for others, it should not distract us from the fact that disabled archers have often a lot of problems to struggle with. Archers in wheelchairs are quite common nowadays, but some archers have to deal with more difficult handicaps like blindness or absent extremities either from birth defects or accidents. There are some good examples of how these people deal with their handicap and doing archery anyway. These pictures are taken at the World Archery Para Championships 2009 in Nymburk (CZE):

Finally, the video of the armless archer. In my opinion, it is an extreme example of what is possible if there is a will. I have never seen somebody doing archery with a comparable handicap and moreover, this guy here is doing quite good.

Edit: Yesterday, at January 12th, Andrew Leibs published a good article called “Archery for the Blind”. If you are interested in such things and if you want to learn more about the possibilities for disabled persons to do archery, this might be a good start for you:

http://accessibletravel.suite101.com/article.cfm/archery_for_the_blind

Kathuna Lorig (USA)

So, whats it with archers and tattoos? After so many pictures that I published here, I noticed a lot of archers like to show they bond to archery through a tattoo. It is very interesting what different types of tattoos you find. And even more interesting, what is a good part of the body to have a tattoo on for an archer?

It seems like competing in the Olympic Games is still the most important goal for quite a lot top-level archers in the world. Many of them want to perpetuate a participation in that competition by getting tattooed, that is the reason you find a lot of tattoos with relation to the Olympic Games. And where do you need to have your fancy tattoo placed? The forearm is a very nice spot if you like it to be seen while competition (especially for recurve archers).

Two examples for combining the forearm with the olympic symbol are Khatuna Lorig and Brady Ellison of USA:

Another popular place for archer’s tattoos seem to be the ankle, as proven by the following pictures:

Archery Grandmaster Natalia Valeeva of Italy joins with an archery-in-general tattoo at her ankle

life.com/image/82230311

while Marie-Pier Beaudet of Canda remembers her first participation in Olympic Games 2004 aged only 17 at the same, obviously popular place.

life.com/image/82227701