Hi
folks, my name is Phil Tranter and I am writing this article about my
experience at the Para Archery competition in Rome 2022.
My spotter Marina and I were in Rome for a total of 5days where the temperature during our stay was a punishing 37 degrees during the day, falling to 24 degrees overnight. The venue where the competition was held had little shade so conditions were a bit testing.
The
first couple of days consisted of practice and acclimatisation. We all then
shot a 72 arrow round, this is used to rank each archer first to last.
This
information is then the basis of the elimination round, those who rank highest
shoot against the lower ranks. Eventually you have the archers who shoot the
Gold to Bronze matches.
I came 2nd in the qualification/ ranking round. Then I shot against Norway in the first elimination round and won. Then I shot against Spain in the second elimination round and lost. This put me into the Bronze medal match against Italy.
At
the finals, the event was being televised. As 8 visually impaired archers all
began their practice session, one of the film crew almost came to a sticky end
when he started to walk in front of the line. Thankfully the line judges
prevented a potentially fatal shooting.
One
of the B1 archers, who are completely blind, inadvertently shot into the
electronic scoring system, it continued to work following the arrows removal.
They quickly moved the system to a safer distance.
At
the Bronze medal match, each archer shoots alternating three arrow ends, best
score wins, four ends in total.
The
Italian won the first two ends. I then pulled back the next two ends which led
to a fifth decider end. We then had a tied score so it went to a sudden death
one arrow shoot out. The Italian shot a score of 8. I shot a 10x, the highest
score, game over, Bronze medal to me. Hurray!
