Olympics in archers' sights

A wholly new dynamic will be in play when the New Zealand archery championships are finalised at the Solway golf driving range in Masterton on Saturday, January 7.

Following the successful world archery format, big-screen TVs will provide arrow-by-arrow coverage of the intense matches that will decide the national champion.

And seating will be brought in to get spectators as close to the action as humanly possible without disrupting the competitors.

Contesting this country's premier archery event will be eight teams and 16 individuals who have come through a tough week of elimination stages held in Porirua and Masterton.

Among those who will be vying for major honours in the individual championship will be 2004 junior and 2009 senior world championship bronze medallist Stephen Clifton and 2010 gold medallist at the World Cup in Shanghai Shaun Teasdale, both of whom will be in the men's compound division, and Jo Sun-Kim in the women's recurve division.

Sun-Kim was part of the South Korea team that won the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She now lives in Christchurch.

In addition to the national titles World Archery will be allocating Olympic spots to countries within the Oceania region.

Where three or more different countries are competing in a division "open" medals will be on offer and that has enticed entries from the United Kingdom, Australia, Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia.

"This is going to be the most exciting nationals we've had yet," organiser Chris Gorman said. "We'll even have cameras set up to show the arrows landing on the targets.

"It's going to be a marvellous experience."

Speaking of targets, they will be set at 70m away for the recurve archers and 50m away for the compounds - 50m being the equivalent to 2.5 cricket pitches, two basketball courts or 12 average cars end to end.

The aim for contestants is to hit the bull's eye (the 10 zone, as archers call it) and that will score them the maximum points.

The 10 zone is only 10cm wide, the same size as the bottom of a coffee cup.

Putting that into perspective, when the archers hit that centre they are putting arrows into a coffee cup from two basketball courts away.