Why that? Yesterday, I published pictures of the 2nd leg of the European Junior Cup 2009 held in Sarzana, Italy. Mr. Riccardo Cafagno, president of the Archery Club of Sarzana gave me permission after a short request and made me able to provide these pictures even after the original event-driven website www.archeryjuniorcup-sarzana2009.com will be closed.

With that, there are now more than 30,000 pictures online covering an enormous amount of 60 different international competitions.

But this is not the only threshold that has been crossed lately. A few days ago, archeryimages had it’s 100,000th visitor. This is nice to see and it’s good that this website seems to be helpful or interesting for a lot of people. If you are still with me, these data seem not to be boring enough. So here is more:

The 30,000 pictures are organized in 400 categories in the gallery and have been viewed 1,3 million times by now. This month I already had visitors from more than 40 countries, including Trinidad & Tobago, the Seychelles, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. The most watched pictures in the gallery are those of the arrows hitting a waterfilled balloon, which have been watched 18,000 times as I wrote last week. The oldest pictures are from 1991, the newest ones from September 2009.

So, what to say? It is nice to see this website grow and I like to carry on with it. I got a lot of different feedback in the past and I am always happy about it. You are always invited to give me your opinion about this site, to complain or say what else you have to say. I am still happy about people giving me a note if they are able to provide pictures that are missing in the ai gallery. For example, photos of the Olympic Games 2000 in Sydney and the Games before are missing to this day although they definitely would be interesting.

I am currently developing some new fancy features for archeryimages that I can hopefully present you within the next weeks, but if you have ideas, feel free to let me know.

Hm… and what is the conclusion of this post? I am not sure, but I guess it simply is: Stay tuned!

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

Bérengère Schuh with Hoyt´s FormulaRX

Hey Folks!
You may liked the portraits made by the french photographer Jean-Denis Gitton ( www.jdgitton.com ) that were already online at archeryimages for some time. There are new ones to see!

The pictures are portraits of Thibault Fioretti and Bérengère Schuh, who are both members of the french national team, presenting the new clothing line for their team.

The pictures are licensed under a creative commons license, it’s detailed conditions are linked within the gallery. Regarding that conditions, these picture are the only ones on this site that can actually be redistributed and used in other public ways. Big thanks for that!

Oh, I forgot the most important thing: The link to the gallery.

At first, I didn’t have the intention to bring all this up again. But it seems like quite a lot of people are still interested in events of 2005 or even before. At this place, I already wrote about the official FITA gallery you can find at www.archery.org some time ago. But as long as they hardly going back to 2006 it seems like there is still a sense of a website like this. To make a long story short, I am still not convinced about reviving this website. Nevertheless, you can now find all the galleries covering events between 1991 and 2008 again by visiting Photogallery.

Not to forget, the search function is of course working too. What to do with that? Why not searching for logos of all events?

FITA World Field Archery Championships 2008

There are new pictures available:
Thanks Robert Potts of www.world-champs2008.net, I could add about 900 pictures of the World Champs Field 2008 in Llwynypia, Wales.

You can find the gallery here:
http://www.archeryimages.net/gallery/index.php?action=pictures&cid=288

For results and further information about this event, please visit the event-driven website www.world-champs2008.net. Always up-to-date and with a lot of more pictures: The team of fieldarcher.org ( www.fieldarcher.org ).

Logos

I now managed to repair nearly all damage that was caused by the server downtime lately. Archeryimages is now up to date and fully functionable. With the help of Nils Asmussen from www.script-solution.de I could finally erase the last bugs in the gallery.
Following announcement was already made by me here, but was also deleted while the crash. So, I will repeat it: If you are looking for logos and banners, that where produced exclusively for a certain event, just use the search with typing in “logo”. Or simply click here. You will then see all logos that are currently available on archeryimages.

Sébastien Peineau (FRA)

There is now a new entry in the misc-gallery, some very artistic portraits and black-and-white pictures of the French national team. Superb shots, an absolute must-see!

Follow this link to go there directly.

Field EC 2007 Bjelovar (CRO)

I’m now finished uploading the pictures of the European Field Archery Championship 2007. 1840 pictures, that is a lot stuff to look through. Hope you enjoy it and thanks again to fieldarcher.org for the pictures.
Klick here to go directly to the album.

P.S.: If you want to say something or give your opinion about a photo, do so using the comment-function. You don’t need to register, subscribe or give any personal information, just choose a nickname and say what you like…