Tournament Rules for Archery

Scoring

• Tournament archery is usually held indoors, though FITA rules provide for outdoor competition using the same rules, but placing the target farther away from the archers. For indoor competition, the archer must stand behind a shooting line that is 70 meters from the target. The target is set up with its center point exactly 4 feet, 3 inches above the ground.

  A tournament archery target is made of paper with a rigid backing and is entirely within a 4-foot circle. The target consists of a series of concentric rings, each 2.4 inches wide. The outermost two rings are white. Moving toward the center, two rings each are black, blue, red and gold. The center gold circle is worth a value of 10 points, with each ring worth one point less moving outward, so that the outermost white ring is worth one point.

Types of Competition

• FITA archery regulations specify four different types of archery competition. These include both individual and team competitions, each with one category for men and one for women. Men and women follow the same rules and shoot at targets placed at the same distance. Both team and individual competitions consist of a ranking round, an elimination round and a finals round.

Individual Competition

• An individual archery competition begins with a field of archers, each of whom shoots 72 arrows. The top 64 competitors move on to the elimination round, which is where an Olympic competition begins. The 64 ranked archers compete head-to-head in the elimination round, with the first ranked facing off against the 64th ranked, and so on. Each pair of archers shoots six ends (rounds) consisting of three arrows each. Archers must observe a 40-second time limit for each arrow, and the archer with the highest combined score after 18 arrows advances to the next round.

  When eight archers remain, they enter the head-to-head finals round. This round consists of four ends of three arrows, with the eliminated archers shooting against one another for the bronze metal after the semifinal round.

  In the event of a tie, archers shoot in a sudden death round, firing one arrow each until either archer achieves a higher single arrow score. The time limit per arrow increases to 50 seconds for sudden death.

Team Competition

• Team competition in tournament archery consists of 16 teams of three archers each. Team competition uses the same ranking round as the individual competition. In every round, each team member shoots a single end of nine arrows, in a time limit of 3 minutes. The arrows are removed from the target and scored following each end of nine arrows.

  When two teams tie in a given round, each archer from each team fires one arrow at the same target. The closest arrows from each team are compared, with the closest of the six arrows to the center of the target earning that team the right to advance to the next round.

Equipment

• Tournament archery mandates that archers use a traditional recurve bow. Bows may be constructed of several different materials, including carbon, wood and fiberglass. Bows contain mechanical sights and stabilizers to aid in shooting. Arrows are to be constructed from graphite or aluminum.

  FITA rules also allow for compound bows and barebows (which lack a mechanical sight) in special competitions, but not in Olympic tournaments.