Gisborne archers on target

Rock steady: Chris Underdown shows calm and poise as he takes aim at the weekend. He brought home excellent results, finishing fourth and second in two divisions he competed in. Pictures by Paul Rickard

Gisborne Archery Club hosted some of the best bowmen and women from around the country at their Gizzy Vegas Shoot last weekend.

The annual event is a chance for the club to run a unique format for the competition.

There is only an open division for competitors who contested either compound, recurve or combined categories of bow styles.

Recurve archery uses a more traditionally styled bow, while compound archery uses a modern style of pulleys and mechanisms to minimise the effort needed to draw the bowstring.

The first day of competition saw competitors shoot a “ranking round” where everyone was seeded based on their performance. Day two started with a non-elimination round based on ranking, where the winner takes the highest ranking, followed by four rounds of competition.

The competition ended with the top four archers competing in a shoot-off, with first and second-ranked players battling for the top two spots on the podium.

Club president David Croskery said there was some exciting action over the weekend, with a highlight being Riku Van Tonder shooting a “clear round”, scoring a perfect score of 600 in the compound division, which he eventually won.

Van Tonder has previously competed at the official Vegas Shoot in the United States, where he finished third in 2019, winning $10,000.

The top performer over the weekend was Chris Underdown, who finished fourth in the recurve division and second in the combined scores division, said Croskery.

Underdown was fresh off a second-place finish at the Rose Bowl, contested annually between Eastern and Central district archery clubs.

Alongside his daughter Chloe Underdown-Rickard and Stephen Mann, the trio could not defend the Rose Bowl after winning it last year.

With every archer scoring up to 810 points each for their team, the trio lost by just 14 points to Tauranga Archers Club A to take home the runners-up Hiccup Cup.