Day 2 and Elimination Rounds

The 2nd day started where the first left of, still in the same state and still shooting badly. So i recorded season lows for every distance and i'm not really sure why.

Elimination day arrived and i felt great, the butterflies were there and i was in a totally different frame of mind. My first match was against Reiner Schmidt of Germany which i won quite comfortably, 2nd up was Kimimasa Onodera of Japan as he was ranked 5th i thought i would have a tougher time of it than i did, It wasn't an easy match by any means but i pipped him by 1 point to go through to the 1/8ths.

Oh Joy!!! a Korean...Yun Young Bea was my next opponant, it would have been a nice scalp to have but i had a couple of flyers in the first end, I beat him in the second end but by then the damage had already been done. So thats where my run stopped, To be beaten by a Korean in Korea isn't something to be ashamed of and i am really quite pleased with my performance when it really mattered.

I'm not sure where i came overall yet but it should be 12th or 13th, and depending on who medals in the team rounds tommorrow i could still have won a place for GB in Beijing!!

Day 1 of competition

Ok, after a 36 hour trip and 3 days of practice, the IPC World Championships kicked off for me this morning. Practice went very well and things were looking good but the only problem was i think i was too laid back, i mean i felt no nerves at all which is pretty unusual for me. I usually have a touch of the butterflies at the start of every round i shoot but this morning there were none, nada, zero, zipp!!!

Unfortunately it appears that these nerves are quite an important part of my shooting as my scores were borderline dismal. I shot the lowest 90m and the lowest 70m scores of the whole season and as a result finished today in 25th position. If i had scored the same as i have been all season long i would be sitting in 2nd or 3rd place this evening, so you can imagine how frustrated i'm feeling right now.

Anyhoo, tommorrow is another day as they say (whoever "they" are) and i have the 50m and 30m distances to shoot. 50m being my best distance so i'm hoping to repair some of the damage done today there. I really need to be in the top 15 by the end of tomorrow so i get a bye through to the 2nd round of the elimination matches.

Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for me and i promise i will try to be nervous :)

Till tomorrow....

Getting Close now!

Sorry for lack of updates but it's been "all-go" again recently. As mentioned in my previous post i shot at the british Target Championships half way throug August. The first day went fantastically well and i shot a new personal best of 1090 in the York Round, Sadly i didn't fare so well on the second day but it was still a good weekend overall.

The following weekend i was back down in Exmouth for the Premier Event. The first day consisted of a 720 qualifying round and then Head to Head elimination matches. The weather during the 720 was awful (up to force 7 winds were recorded) but i shot well and qualified in 1st place. I comfortably won my first head to head match but went out in the next round by just 1 point. Luckily it was to my team mate Noel so i didn't really mind too much.

The 2nd day at Exmouth was a full FITA round, but the weather was even worse than the day before so the shoot was cancelled at lunchtime.
I have been struggling on the second day of 2-day shoots recently and we put it down to me just plain shooting too much. With this in mind I pulled out of the next two tournaments and just rested.

Last weekend I shot for Gloucestershire in the GWAS Inter-County Tournament. I didn't record a particularly high score but it was enough to help Gloucestershire pretty much clean up.

This weekend will be spent fine tuning my bows and generally making sure i have all the bases covered for the World Championships. It's seemed so far away for such a long time and now it's just over a week before we fly out. I am really looking forward to visiting Korea and it's really going to be something special shooting there.

Like the Arizona Cup i will be updating my Blog very frequently while i'm out there, so you can keep track of what i'm up to and how the Championships are going, plus photos, facts and much more.

Official Webite of the IPC World Championships

Till next time !

Latest News plus Video

2 weekends, 2 double FITA's, it's been pretty manic lately. The Andover Double FITA was first and it turned out to be quite a nice weekend. I think it was the first shoot this year where i didn't get rained on. The first day went well, i shot a 1207 but on the second day i had a nightmare at the 50m distance! I just couldn't hit the gold to save my life it was very odd, but when we got to 30m everything was good again?? I ended up on 1189 which is 1 point short of Master Bowman Classification. I would have been mortified if i hadn't already got it. I finished 10th overall but considering the competition there i am very happy with the result.

This past weekend was Redruth Double FITA. This is one of my favourite tournaments. I shot well on the Saturday again (1205) but had a bad 90m on the Sunday as i was a little stiff. I did however shoot a PB at 30m (despite the sudden downpour) and finished on 1195. The odd thing about this was for the last few weeks my goal has been to shoot a 2400+ for the double FITA and this weekend I actually hit it...exactly, how odd is that, 288 arrows and my score was 2400 on the nail!!! I ended up winning the 1st day, winning the 2nd day and winning the Double too! 3 gold medals and 2 trophies, quite a haul for a weekends work.

This coming weekend I'm at the British Target Championships up at Lilleshall, It's a 2-day Double York (not my favourite round but it's all good practice)

Last night I did some video work on my form, i've managed to compress some of it enough to put here. Be mindful of the fact that my form may be different as i've had to adapt slightly due to my disability. Enjoy and don't laugh too much :)

Till next time.

European Grand Prix

The tournament was supposed to be a Double 720 ranking round and the Head to head matches, unfortunately the heavens opened on Friday and we had to stop after shooting just 4 dozen of the 1st 720.

By the afternoon the field was under 4 inches of water so shooting was scrapped totally that day.Saturday we managed to shoot the remaining 2 dozen arrows from the first round and that was it. So it was decided that the head-to-head part of the tournament would be replaced by the 2nd 720 round so at least people could get scores for World rankings etc.

I shot as well as i could have hoped for considering the conditions and went from being 9 points behind the 3rd placed archer in the first round to winning the Bronze medal by 4 points so i was very happy. The Chinese visitors took Gold and Silver and it was very interesting and useful to actually see them shoot and to see the level that they are currently at as they were pretty much an unknown entity before the event.

Anyhoo enough rambling..in a nutshell i beat all the European Archers which is what i set out to do and came home with the bronze so it was a successful trip, oh and while i was there i was officially informed that i will be shooting for GB at the IPC World Championships in Korea (Sept 30th - Oct 11th)

At last !!

This weekend I shot a double FITA at the NCAS tournament in Bradford, the weather stayed relatively ok thankfully as i was expecting to get drenched again. Saturday was a bad shoot, one of those where nothing seems to go right. I decided to stop shooting before i got myself into a really negative state of mind.

It seemed to do the trick as on Sunday i came out guns blazing, i shot my highest ever end at 90m (56) and my highest ever 70m distance (312). I finished on a score of 1219 which was also a FITA P.B. for me, it was also my 3rd MB score of the season so now i am officially a Master Bowman !!

I have another FITA shoot this weekend and then the following Wednesday i'm of to sunny Stoke Mandeville to shoot in the European Grand Prix. This is a great 5 day tournament where National Teams from all over Europe shoot a double 720 over 2 days to get rankings for the elimination rounds.

This year is going to be very special as the Chinese Paralympic Team are attending, it's going to be a good tester for the World Championships later in the year. I did quite well at this event last year getting double Bronze medals and my shooting has improved quite a bit since then so i'm hoping to do a little better this time around.

Fingers crossed!!

Latest News

Sorry for my lack of updates recently but times just flown, you know how it is. I didn't shoot at Oxford in the end as i felt my dizzy spells deemed it too dangererous to actually shoot near other people. It took around 5 weeks for my head to settle down but i'm all good now.. thankfully.

My shooting has been going rather well, i've shot several PB's lately and i've got 2 of the 3 scores needed for my Master Bowman classification.

Last weekend was the GWAS Regional Outdoor Championships, this is a fantastic event held in the grounds of Dunster Castle and probably one of the nicest venues i've shot at. The last two years have been scorching hot but unfortunately this year was cold, Windy and non-stop rain..ugh!

Anyway I shot reasonably well on the 1st day (The round is a Double York spread over 2 days) and was sitting in 2nd position, 5 points behind the leader and 1 point ahead of the 3rd placed guy. I arrived at the field on Sunday in the pouring rain and it pretty much remained that way off and on for the rest of the day. I shot better somehow than the saturday and to my suprise everyone else seemed to be 20-30 points down on the previous days scores so yes that means i won it and became this years Regional Outdoor Champion!

The trophy is very nice but sadly we aren't allowed to keep them as they are quite valuable and kept on permanent display in Dunster Castle.

We won't mention the fact that when i was presented with the trophy i kinda ..err.. dropped it, there were gasps of horror as the base bounced off the table and onto the floor. I don't think my comment of " lucky it wasn't a new one!" went down too well with the officials though..Ahh well :)