When was archery first included as an olympic sport

They encompassed various contests of running, lifting, throwing, jumping, fighting and, in later years, riding, as well as musical and poetic competitions and religious ceremonies. The idea of the sporting contests was to find the perfect athlete, the fastest, strongest, most skilled hero, who excelled in many of these disciplines.

Archery was never part of the Games since the ancient Greeks had a distaste for the bow, which could kill a man from afar instead of face to face. Before World War I, the Games were organised by national sports organisations of the host countries, not the International Olympic Committee.

These organisations had more or less free rein concerning disciplines, rules, modes of competition and so on. Unlike a few other sports, archery was still an exclusively male affair in Each shot at 50m and 33m, for which the best six or eight archers had to qualify through large open team events.

Apparently, they were variations of the beursault , highly popular in France, where a target is set up at the end of a narrow path lined by hedges, trees or wooden boards. Unfortunately, no further records exist concerning the targets, scoring, number of arrows or pretty much anything else. A total of archers competed in these perche events, at least six of them from the Netherlands, but the other nationalities are also unknown.

Gold, silver and bronze medal winners in all six disciplines came from France or Belgium. Of the athletes who competed, only 62 came from outside North America, and only between 12 and 15 nations were represented in all. The exclusively American archery competitions for both men and women took place in a more conventional style than four years before. The men shot a double American round with a total of arrows at , and yard distances, and a double York round of 72 arrows at yards, 48 arrows at 80 yards and 24 arrows at 60 yards.

The women shot a double Columbia round of 12 arrows at each of , and yard distances, and a double National round of 24 arrows at 60 yards and 12 arrows at 50 yards. Her father, Thomas Foster Scott, came 17th in the double American round at the age of 71 years and days, making him the oldest archer ever to compete in the Olympic Games. William Thompson, the famous American archer and co-founder of the American Archery Association, took home two bronze medals.

The 64 competitors, seeded from the ranking round, advance to the elimination round, a single-elimination, head-to-head style of competition seed No. Six ends of three arrows -- for a total of 18 -- are shot at a target 70 meters away with a second time limit per arrow. The format of the men's and women's team competition is the same and consists of the ranking round, followed by the FITA Olympic round.

The same set of shots is used to seed competitors in the individual competitions as well. In the men's and women's competitions, the top 16 teams -- seeded from the ranking round -- are selected using scores from the ranking round.

If there are less than 16 teams, the top teams will be given byes. Share: Facebook Twitter. Well not every sport, as there is a list of unusual sports , extinct sports and newly created sports. Every athlete in a group must shoot an arrow, but they can fire in any order. After the first team completes its group, the second team shoots. Finally, both teams repeat the process for a second group. The team with the highest score receives two set points. If tied, each team receives a point.

Like in the individual competition, the first team to six set points wins the match. The match consists of four ends of two arrows each for each archer.

This means a total of 24 arrows are shot. The team has two minutes to shoot all six arrows. In the event of a tie, each team is allowed one minute for each team member to shoot an arrow. The team with the highest total score is the winner. Archers must be at least 16 years old to compete in the Olympic Games.

NOCs earn qualification spots in two ways, by team or by individual. For each gender, an NOC can send three archers to compete with a team qualification spot. Each of those archers will also compete in the individual events.

NOCs earning individual qualification spots are limited to a single archer in that event. There are a total of 12 team qualification spots for each gender. The host nation automatically gets a spot, and the top eight teams from the World Archery Championships get slots. An additional 28 individual qualification spots are up for grabs for each gender, bringing the total number of competitors in each individual event to Between five and eight of these spots are awarded at the World Archery Championships.

Additional spots are awarded through continental qualifying tournaments, and at least three spots are allocated to a Final World Individual Qualification Tournament.

Finally, three places for each gender are reserved for the Tripartite Commission invitations. From until , the first elimination round would pit the first-ranked archer against the 64th, the second against the 63rd, and so on. Archers would simultaneously shoot 18 arrows in three-arrow ends. The archer with the highest score after 18 arrows would move on to the next round, while the loser would be eliminated. During the quarterfinals, semifinals, and medal matches, called the finals rounds, things changed.

Each archer would shoot 12 arrows, again in ends of three. Instead of shooting simultaneously, archers in the match would alternate by arrow. The losers of the quarterfinals were eliminated, while the losers of the semifinals would compete against each other to determine the bronze medal and fourth place.

The winners of the semifinals would face each other in the gold medal match, with the winner taking the gold and the loser earning the silver medal.