Archery - Find out how your Olympic archers are selected

As the 2012 Olympics draw near read about what the athletes from around the world had to do to qualify their places to shoot at Lords Cricket ground in London. Archers really have to prove themselves under pressure in a large competition environment and have continuous great performance win Olympic place. The main qualifying event took place in Italy 2011. Since then there have been several other opportunities at continental tournaments and recently at the final qualification tournaments in Ogden for archers to prove their worth. The whole process is somewhat complicated but here is a simplified overview.

128 archers shooting at the 2012 Olympics

                             Only 3 men and 3 women from each national Olympic Committee allowed.

             64 places are men and 64 are women.

6 places to the host country – GB 

                3 men and 3 women.

                Each Olympics 6 places are automatically given to the host country.

116 places through qualifying tournaments 

                58 men and 58 women

               

                32 places are allocated at the World Archery Championships, Italy 2011

                                24 team allocations

                                                These are the top 8 teams (9 if GB is in the top 8).

                                8 individual places 

                                               Top 8 archers that haven't already qualified through the  

                                                team allocations. Only 1 archer per national Olympics committee.

                                 13 places allocated at continental qualification tournaments

                                               

                                                 6 Asia, 6 Europe, 6 America, 4 Africa and 4 Oceania

                    3/2 men 3/2 women each continent

                      

              Any national Olympic committee already allocated a place at the world archery championships can not enter these competitions with the same gender.  

                                  9 places allocated at the Final World Team Qualification Tournament, Ogden 202

                                                3 best ranked teams per gender

Tournament only open to national Olympics committees that did not qualify a team through the World Archery Championships. If someone qualifies at this tournament that has already been allocated an individual place then this place will be added to the places available at the Final World Individual Qualification Tournament (below).   

                                4 places allocated at the Final World individual Qualification Tournament, Ogden 2012

                                                        This is the final opportunity for archers to qualify and the 4 best individual archers who do not already have a place will qualify.

6 Tripartite commission places        

                                          

3 men and 3 women

           This is a commission aiming to strengthen the international representation. This is achieved by allowing archers from national Olympics committees with few or no qualified athletes to participate. Only archers from national Olympic committees that have less than 7 athletes over the last two Olympic games can be invited to submit their best archer(s).

However, all archers need to meet a certain standard before they care considered. This includes achieving the following minimum scores between 2^nd July 2011 and 1^st July 2012 at registered WA events.

Men WA round 1230 or 70 m round 625

Women WA round 1230 or 70 m round 600

There are detailed reports discussing the qualifying process including documents from the internationalarchery federation and tripartite commission. 

Now you know how Olympic archers are selected, look at the archers that have been selected in the documents for men and women available on the World Archery web site.

A guide to understanding Olympic archery to come shortly along with a blog of Olympic Archery history – how it all began.

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