Archery

Age does not matter

Archery is a sport for everyone, and the age of the player does not play a major role. Look at Polish archer, Slawomir Naploszek. In 1992, at the age of 24, he went to Barcelona for the Olympic Games, where he finished 54th out of 75 competitors. A year after the Olympics, he started working in a bank and at some point he gave up training. In 2007, he returned to archery, even trained in a bank corridor, and in June 2021 he won an Olympic pass! At the age of 53, he went to Tokyo, where he fell from the competition in the 1/32 finals. Thanks to archery, however, he could once again feel like a real athlete. Just like Bronislawa Krol, who, at the age of 88, participated in the Polish Masters Championships.

The archery tournament as part of the European Games Krakow – Malopolska will take place in Krakow, at the renovated facilities of the Plaszowianka Sports Club. The competition will start on June 23 and end six days later. 128 players will take part in the competition.

Eight competitions will be held in Krakow – four individual and four team competitions. In the individual competition, women and men will compete in the classic and compound bow. In the team competitions, we will see competitions in the classic bow (men’s, women’s and mixed teams) and in the compound bow.

You don’t have to worry about the level – direct passes to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be available in Krakow.

Long history

This traditional sport made its debut at the second modern Olympic Games in 1900, but then dropped out of the program for many years. It returned in 1972 and has been heavily dominated by South Koreans for over thirty years.

The debut of archery in the Olympic arenas took place in Paris in 1900. Seven disciplines were played at different distances. Four years later, on the occasion of the Olympic Games in St. Louis women’s archery and team competition were introduced. In 1920, archery fell out of the Olympic program for many years and returned only in 1982, on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Munich. It has been a fixture on the agenda ever since.

Initially, gold medals in archery were won by Europeans, the turn of the 1970s and 1980s was marked by the dominance of the United States, but then the balance of power changed completely. Since the 1980s, archery has been completely dominated by representatives of South Korea. Since 1984, archers from this country have won 27 of the 39 Olympic gold medals and today they definitely lead the all-time medal table. However, competitors from Korea will not come to the European Games, so this time the gold medals will go to someone from our continent.