Croatia 2014, World Field Archery Championships.

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Every two years, the best field archers gather… this time in Zagreb, for the world championships. Starting Tuesday 19th with the Official Practice day, we’re nearly there. The crew have had access to Park Maksimir since Saturday and the practice field is set. The teams have been travelling through the weekend and soon the Unofficial Practice day, Monday, will be upon everyone.





Although it was originally on the outskirts, Park Maksimir is now a large park in the city of Zagreb. It is the oldest public park in the city and was the first public park in south-eastern Europe. It was then a dense forest of Hornbeam and Oak and the remnants of these now form the surrounds of the park.








The landscaping of the park involved felling the centre of the forest, grading the hills, excavating large holes for lakes, the laying of paths, and the construction of bridges.
So the park now has several large meadows, numerous creeks, and five lakes, and is a habitat for various plant and animal species, such as the Middle Spotted Woodpecker, an endangered species in Europe.





Zagreb’s Zoo also forms part of the park’s territory, located in the southern part of Maksimir Park. So it's not hard to imagine some assurances had to be given there.

Three different 24-target courses have been laid out for the qualification and elimination rounds, with a spectator area for the four-target finals.

Zagreb first held the World Archery Field Championships 40 years ago, when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. In 2004, the nation held it again – and this week it will have the event for the third time, when Zagreb becomes only the second city to have hosted the world field twice.

As well as the competition divisions seen on the World Cup and international target archery circuit – compound and recurve – the World Field Championships include a barebow category.
Using recurves without sights, stabilisers, clickers and other useful devices, barebow archers rely on field-craft, a precise sense of repetition and hugely difficult-to-master technique.

The tournament includes both individual and team competitions. Teams are formed by one archer of each bow-type.

Field archery is best described as a golf-course-style layout of targets in the woods. Archers (or teams) shoot three arrows at each target before moving onto the next.

Most of the targets are at marked distances, but one of the two days of 24-target qualification courses is shot at unmarked distances – which brings a completely different element to the competition.

The competition field is cut after qualification for an eliminations stage, before semifinals and finals shot as head-to-head matches.

Competition starts with the unmarked qualification round on Wednesday, marked qualification is on Thursday, and eliminations on Friday. Team events on Saturday, and individual medal matches on Sunday.

All the finals are being streamed live on Archery TV.


And this is what it's all about...

...let the games commence!

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Well while some teams are still en route a few teams have made it to Croatia already. The Irish, GB, Australian, Mexican and Argentinian teams have arrived, among others. 27 countries are represented, 4 of those only not from the European geographical area. There are large contingents from Sweden (18), Italy (24), Great Britain (24) and the US (35) as you might expect but some countries have a surprising amount too...Poland (16), Germany (12). The host country is well represented, as are nearby countries such as Slovenia (13), Czech Republic (13)while Slovakia has 2 archers and there's one brave Serbian. Given their strength it's surprising that France has only 9 archers and Spain has 5. For the record, Ireland has 3 archers from Northern Ireland representing it. Some of their club mates are wearing GB colours so they'll not be lonely.






Lots of helpful advice too..

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Showing how it's done at the Official Practice day today.



A huge melting pot, the World Championships.



Getting your eye in after a long trip.




Now you know what the French felt like at the battle of Crechy.

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After the opening ceremony...



... where team colours were on display.




.. it was the day of Official Practice...the beginning of the Championships.

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As well as making the weight..





Reading the rules/instructions/advice/maps




... getting a few repairs done..






... and back to the practising..

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For some people it's not their first time competing..





Always good to see my own riser is still good enough.








Some old friends are back, this time without his cast after a motor bike accident..





The grouping is as you'd expect.




Well.... most of the time.

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The first casualty has occurred.




Not getting the message across.






Checking the binos.




Eh?

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He won't be separated from his tab.







Friends and competitors.




Still time not to be serious.

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Erik "Two Bows" Jonsson




Number one bow plus back-up. Essential at this level.

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Men's Unmarked Qualification round results.



Women's Results.

[IMG]http://tradtalk.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27766&stc=1&d=1408548752[/IMG In the Men's Compound where Ireland has two representatives, Alan Convery is at 400 and Robert Hall has 379. The leaders in that group, Jesse Broadwater and Steve Anderson have 425 and 420 respectively, with the previous winner, Dave Cousins with 418.[/img]

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A few early pictures from the first day of qualification.

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More later.

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A few more pictures from the World Archery site:

Last years European Field Mens BB champion. Alesandro Giannini

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Bobby Larssson



Marjan Podrzaj

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http://www.worldarchery.org/NEWS/News/ArtMID/10510/ArticleID/9668/Sweden%E2%80%99s-barebow-men-claimed-the-top-three-places-at-the-world-field-champs-

JONSSON, OTTOSSON and LARSSON lead the unmarked barebow category after strong performances in the qualification under changeable weather conditions in Zagreb.

JONSSON claimed the top spot with 366 points after shooting all well. He was followed by his teammate and world champion in 2002, Martin OTTOSSON, who was behind by just one point and LARSSON by four.

“It was a flat course without being too challenging. It’s still a beautiful way to start as you can get into your own shooting and enjoy the field,” OTTOSSON said.

“At the end it was raining and I shot low because of the speed reduction of the water on the arrows and the bow, but I felt good with my performance during the day,” Martin added.

In the barebow women´s division, Val d’Isere silver medallist, Eleonora STROBBE (ITA), led the round with 330 points setting her goal to the finals: “Marked distances are easy for me. I just pull the string and shoot… I’m trying to repeat my score tomorrow and get into the finals” an excited STROBBE said.

In the compound men´s category, reigning world champ BROADWATER (USA) shot an impressive 425 points putting him in the lead to start his way to gold medal. Jesse was followed by teammates ANDERSON and COUSINS.

Another country to lead the qualification round was Germany, with recurve women Lisa UNRUH and Elena RICHTER. Both ladies had success in the 2014 target season before and are now some of the favourites to make the field finals.

Tomorrow athletes will complete the qualification round in another 24-target course, this time with marked distances. The top 16 athletes from each category will advance to the individual elimination on 22 August.

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Not your usual game: field archery’s a completely alternative style of archery than usual target tournaments. Here are five ways it differs…

1) Divisions

Three bowstyles compete at the World Archery Field Championships: compound, recurve and barebow. The first two are seen on the World Cup and international target archery circuit – and use similar or identical equipment – but barebow is unsual.

Recurve bows shot without sights, stabilisers, clickers and other useful devices, barebows use techniques like string walking (moving their draw hand up and down the string) to make aiming easier. Accurate barebows archers are impressive: the style is hard to master.

2) The field

Target archery is shot on level ground, no matter if it’s indoor or outdoor. Field archery is only outdoors, across all kinds of terrain. Hills, woods, mountains, lakes…

It brings in all kinds of variables like shooting uphill and downhill – which changes the sightmark distance – crossing slopes, light and dark and wind conditions from target to target.

3) Distances

Field archery is shot at marked and unmarked distances, which differs from target archery were all distances are known: usually 70 metres for recurve and 50 for compound.

Field archers target distances vary from five to 60 metres – depending on the division. The targets themselves have six scoring zones – one to four are black rings, five and six gold – and come in four difference sizes: 20, 40, 60 and 80cm diameters.

4) Competition

At the world field, archers shoot three arrows at 48 targets over two days for qualification: 24 marked and 24 unmarked distances.

The top 16 archers in each division move to the first elimination round were they shoot only 12 targets at know distances.

Top eight goes on to the second elimination round and shoot at eight targets. Then, top four moves on to semi-finals, and as well on the final, archers shoot at four new marked targets.

Teams are formed by one archer of each bowtype, and shoot one arrow each per target. Top eight teams go on to head to head matches in quarterfinals at eight targets.

Semifinals and finals matches are between top four teams at for target, all at marked.

5) Shooting groups

Field archery head-to-heads are – as the name suggests – pretty similar to target archery matches: one athlete against another.

But for qualification and elimination, rather than shooting all in a line like target archery, field archery courses are shot in groups of four. Which tends to make conversation during competition a little more relaxed…

…but that’s not to say the competition is any less competitive. This is still archery, after all: and there are world champion titles up for grabs.

At Zagreb 2014, official practice take places on 19 August, followed by the qualifications on 20-21 August, through elimination 22 August, and team events and individual medal matches on 23-24 August.

http://www.worldarchery.org/NEWS/News/ArtMID/10510/ArticleID/9663/Field-archery-101-the-discipline-explained

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Day 2, Qualification Marked round.

Seasoned campaigners of the GB team



Catering van drove over Alessio Noceti's limb




There may be some midges there....




Two-thirds of Team Ireland




Squirrels dumping nuts on the archers

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Hard to spot the posts










Just to show the recurves are present, we've been lucky with the amount of barebow coverage.

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Dark in the woods.

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Irelands compound archers, Alan Convery and Robert Hall finished on 786 and 768 for 22nd and 28th place, respectively.

As the field in each division is now reduced to the top 16 for the first Elimination round, all the Irish archers are out of the competition.

Well done to Alan and Robert mentioned above and to Gilbert McClelland for very creditable scores in a very high scoring competition where truly they were taking on the best in the world of their respective disciplines.

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There are several Northern Irish archers still in the competition under Team GB colours.

Craig McCreery is flying the flag in the Barebow Junior Men with a second place score of 608. The Italian leader is on 632.
Patrick Houston is also in second place in the Recurve Junior Men with 692. The leader is only 2 ahead.
In the Compound Junior women Rebecca Lennon and Morgan Russell Cowan are still competing tomorrow and in the Compound Junior Men, Michael Jordan is in fifth place.
Also Sophie Benton in the Barebow Junior Women and Jordan Mitchell in the Compound Junior Men.


Patrick Houston.

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Video from the front-line, Martin Ottossan of Sweden, current top barebow archer, showing the terrain and techniques.

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It looks as though the last place in the mens BB was decided by a shoot-off between Twan Cleven of the Netherlands and the 2010 Champion Pasi Ahjokivi of Finland with Pasi getting it.

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These are how the barebow results stand.
In each category the 16 form yesterday were narrowed down to 8 and then four.
Those 4 have shot the semi-finals to leave the placings for the gold and bronze medal matches.





Full results are available here.

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'Let's get on with it'

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There were a lot of shoot-offs to decide the cuts of the Elimination rounds.

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Saturday Team Finals

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Saturdays Team Finals.

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Sunday- Individual Finals