Lord’s may ooze tradition and heritage, but for a month in 2012 it will become the home of one of the oldest sporting pursuits of all.

People have been fooling around with bows and arrows since around 10,000 BC. It was one of the primary instruments of war in Classical times, and survived well into the Middle Ages.It was only when some bright spark invented the gun that archers were forced to find an alternative use for their skills.

Archery was introduced to the Olympics in 1900, but was dropped in 1920 due to a lack of uniformity in rules and equipment among nations. A long-awaited international code allowed archery to make its return in 1972.

Jargon:

Anchor: Point on the archer’s face where the drawing hand contacts and locks in at full draw.
Fish-tailing: Visible swerve in an arrow’s flight.
Limb: The working part of a bow.
Nock: A groove in the arrow or bow that engages the string.
Robin Hood: Splitting an arrow lengthwise by firing another arrow into it.
Skirt: The non-scoring area of the target.

Legends

Since Archery became a firm fixture at the Games it has been dominated by South Korea. They have won more gold medals in Archery than in any other Olympic event, 16.

Dong-Hyun Im currently has two Olympic gold’s, four World Championship golds and four Asian Games golds to his name in both individual and team events. This is an incredible achievement as he is considered legally blind and refuses to wear corrective glasses or contact lenses during competition. He has also rejected the offer of free eye surgery to correct his vision. His team mates Park Kyung-mo, Lee Chang Hwan and Jang Yong-ho are also heroes in South Korea for their performances at the Summer Olympics.

Good concentration, balance and eyesight are key elements. The need for a steady hand and decent equipment goes without saying. Athletes opt for bows that are strong, light and bendy, made mainly from laminated wood, aluminium, carbon fibre, fibreglass and either ceramic or foam.

Competitors can use ‘bowsights’ (sighting devices costing between £5 and £200) so long as they do not contain magnifying glasses or lenses. Length of arrow can vary, depending on the draw length of the archer, with a metal point at the front and ‘fletchings’ at the back to help with steady flight.

Arrows are normally made from aluminium or carbon fibre and are colour-coded and labelled to give spectators a better idea which competitor they belong to. Bows propel arrows at around 150 mph.

In the individual competition the perfect score is 720, which would require the archer to find the ‘bullseye’ with all 72 of their shots – a feat which has never been achieved in Olympic competition. The men’s record currently stands at 687 and the women’s 685. While the 12-dart record stands at 117 for men and 115 for women. Any score above 110 is considered competitive, while 115 and above is a formidable total.

Reading wind speed and compensating for it effectively is what separates the best archers from the rest of the pack. Even reading the cross wind slightly wrong can lead archers to not only miss the inner targets, but the board altogether.

Athletes stand 70 metres from their target and score points by firing arrows at 10 concentric scoring zones, from the golden ‘bullseye’ ten-score at the centre to the one-score on the white outer ring. They have 40 seconds to release each arrow.

In the individual and team competitions, a preliminary round to determine seeding takes place before the official start of the London 2012 Games, consisting of 72 arrows.

The seedings are used to determine who plays who in the head-to-head elimination rounds. In the individual competition, 64 archers compete in a knock-out format, with matches comprising 12 arrows each.

Any country that qualifies three male or three female archers into an individual event can compete in the corresponding team event. Team events follow same competition format as the individual events, with the exception that knockout matches consist of 24 arrows per country – eight per archer.