Archery is an event at the Island Games, the biennial multi-sports event for island nations, territories and dependencies. There have been men's, women's and team events at almost every games since 1987. Modern competitive archery is governed by the World Archery Federation, abbreviated WA (formerly FITA - Fédération Internationale de Tir à l'Arc).
Recurve Individual
Recurve Team - 1 team with up to 6 competitors per Island
Compound Individual
Compound Team - 1 team with up to 6 competitors per Island
Minimum age 13 on day of opening ceremony. [1]
| Event | II 1987 | III 1989 | IV 1991 | V 1993 | VI 1995 | VII 1997 | VIII 1999 | IX 2001 | X 2003 | XI 2005 | XII 2007 | XIII 2009 | XIV 2011 | XV | XVI 2015 | XVII 2017 | XVIII | XIX 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current events | |||||||||||||||||||
| Recurve | |||||||||||||||||||
| Single WA 1440 (formerly FITA) recurve | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Recurve knockout | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||
| Recurve 720 | X | X | X | X | X | n | |||||||||||||
| Compound | |||||||||||||||||||
| Single WA 1440 (formerly FITA) compound | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||
| Compound knockout | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||||
| Compound 720 | X | X | X | X | X | n | |||||||||||||
| Past events | |||||||||||||||||||
| Double FITA | X | X | X | ||||||||||||||||
n = non medal competition
| Gold Medals | Total Medals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No: | Team | No: | Team | |
| Single FITA Recurve | 9 |  Faroe Islands | 20 | Faroe Islands |
| Recurve Knockout | 4 | Faroe Islands | 15 | Faroe Islands |
| Recurve 720 | 3 | Faroe Islands | 7 | Faroe Islands |
| Single FITA Compound | 19 | Faroe Islands | 36 | Faroe Islands |
| Compound Knockout | 12 | Faroe Islands | 21 | Faroe Islands |
| Compound 720 | 5 | Faroe Islands | 8 | Faroe Islands |
| Double FITA | 3 |  Guernsey  Malta | 5 |  Åland Guernsey |
Firing 144 arrows in total, being 3 dozen at each of 30m, 50m, 70m and 90m targets for men and 30m, 50m, 60m and 70m for women.
| Gold Medals | Total Medals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No: | Team | No: | Team | |
| Single FITA Recurve | 9 7 | Faroe Islands  IOW | 20 17 | Faroe Islands Guernsey |
Firing 12, 18 or 36 arrows.
| Gold Medals | Total Medals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No: | Team | No: | Team | |
| Single FITA Recurve | 4 3 | Faroe Islands Åland Islands | 15 10 | Faroe Islands Guernsey |
Firing 72 arrows.
| Year | Games | Host | Event | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | ||||
| 2005 | XI |  Shetland | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands NGR IOW NGR | Shetland Shetland |  Ynys Môn Faroe Islands |
| 2007 | XII |  Rhodes | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands Rhodes | Ynys Môn Faroe Islands | Rhodes Guernsey [2] |
| 2011 | XIV | Isle of Wight | Men's 720 Women's 720 |  Orkney Islands NGR Åland NGR | Faroe Islands Faroe Islands |  Gotland Guernsey |
| 2015 | XVI |  Jersey | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands NGR Jersey | Rhodes Guernsey | Jersey Åland |
| 2017 | XVII | Gotland | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Åland Guernsey | Faroe Islands Åland | Faroe Islands  Falkland Islands |
Firing 144 arrows in total, being 3 dozen at each of 30m, 50m, 70m and 90m targets for men and 30m, 50m, 60m and 70m for women.
| Gold Medals | Total Medals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No: | Team | No: | Team | |
| Single FITA Compound | 19 5 | Faroe Islands  IOM | 36 18 | Faroe Islands Jersey |
Firing 12, 18 or 36 arrows.
| Gold Medals | Total Medals | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No: | Team | No: | Team | |
| Single FITA Recurve | 12 6 | Faroe Islands Jersey | 21 13 | Faroe Islands Guernsey Isle of Man |
Firing 72 arrows.
| Year | Games | Host | Event | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | ||||
| 2005 | XI | Shetland | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands NGR IOM NGR | Jersey IOM | Shetland Faroe Islands |
| 2007 | XII | Rhodes | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands Faroe Islands | Guernsey [2] Shetland | Guernsey [2] IOW |
| 2011 | XIV | Isle of Wight | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands IOM | Faroe Islands Jersey | Faroe Islands IOM |
| 2015 | XVI | Jersey | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Faroe Islands NGR 605 Jersey NGR | IOW Guernsey | IOW Jersey |
| 2017 | XVII | Gotland | Men's 720 Women's 720 | Gotland Guernsey | Gotland Faroe Islands | Faroe Islands Guernsey |
| Year | Games | Host | Event | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | ||||
| 1987 | II | Guernsey | Men Women Team | Malta Malta Malta | Åland Ynys Môn Guernsey | Malta IOW IOW |
| 1989 | III | Faroe Islands | Men Women Team | Guernsey Guernsey Guernsey | Åland Ynys Môn IOM | IOW Shetland IOW |
| 1991 | IV | Åland | Men Women Team | Åland NGR Saaremaa Åland | Åland Ynys Môn Jersey | Faroe Islands Shetland Guernsey |
Lee Sung-jin is a recurve archer from South Korea. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, winning in the women's team event at the 2004 and 2012 Summer Olympics. In 2005, she became the women's individual recurve champion at the World Championships and achieved the world number one spot for female recurve archers in the World Archery Rankings. In 2016, the World Archery Federation named her as the ninth best Olympic archer in the history of the Games.
Park Sung-hyun is an archer from South Korea who competed in two Olympic Games, winning three gold medals. Park made her international archery debut in 2001, winning the women's recurve title at that year's World Archery Championships. Her Olympic debut came at the 2004 Summer Olympics, where she won gold medals in both the women's individual and women's team events. She won two further medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics, achieving her third Olympic gold in the women's team event before earning the silver medal as the runner-up in the women's individual event.
Archery had its debut at the 1900 Summer Olympics and has been contested in 16 Olympiads. Eighty-four nations have competed in the Olympic archery events, with France appearing the most often at 31 times. The most noticeable trend has been the excellence of South Korean archers, who have won 27 out of 39 gold medals in events since 1984. It is governed by the World Archery Federation. Recurve archery is the only discipline of archery featured at the Olympic Games. Archery is also an event at the Summer Paralympics.
The women's double National round was one of three archery events on the archery at the 1908 Summer Olympics programme. The competition was held on Friday, 17 July and Saturday, 18 July, with one round each day. The archers had to contend with significant rain and wind on the first day and gusts of wind on the second.
Target archery is the most popular form of archery, in which members shoot at stationary circular targets at varying distances. All types of bow – longbow, barebow, recurve and compound – can be used. In Great Britain, imperial rounds, measured in yards, are still used for many tournaments and these have slightly different rules to metric (WA) rounds, which are used internationally. Archers are divided into seniors and juniors, with juniors being those under the age of 21.
The archery events at the 2012 Olympic Games in London were held over an eight-day period from 27 July to 3 August. Four events took place, all being staged at Lord's Cricket Ground in front of temporary stands built to accommodate up to 6,500 spectators.
The archery competition at the 2010 Commonwealth Games was held at the Yamuna Sports Complex between 4 and 10 October. This was the second games appearance of the optional Commonwealth Games sport, almost thirty years after its debut at the 1982 Commonwealth Games. Twenty-three nations entered archers into the tournament.
The girls' individual archery event at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics was held from 18 to 20 August 2010 at the Kallang Field in Kallang, Singapore. It was one of three recurve archery events which comprised the archery programme at the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics, and featured thirty-one archers from thirty-one countries. Entry was open to female archers born between 1 January 1992 and 31 December 1993.
The women's recurve individual archery event at the 2010 Commonwealth Games was a competition held as part of the archery programme at the Yamuna Sports Complex in Delhi, India, from 4 October to 10 October 2010. It was the second time that the recurve individual event for women had been included in the Commonwealth Games and the first time it had been contested since the 1982 Games in Brisbane, Australia.
Ki Bo-bae is a South Korean recurve archer and three-time Olympic gold medalist. She was the winner of the women's team and women's individual events at the 2012 Summer Olympics and of the women's team event again at the 2016 Summer Olympics, where she also took bronze in the individual competition. Her tally of four Olympic medals places her among the most decorated archers in Olympic history.
The women's individual recurve archery event at the 2014 Asian Games was held from 23 to 28 September at the Gyeyang Asiad Archery Field in Incheon, South Korea. It was the tenth time the event was held as part of the Asian Games sports programme since the debut of archery in 1978. A total of 56 archers from 18 nations qualified for the event. Yun Ok-hee of South Korea was the defending champion.
The women's individual archery event at the 2016 Summer Olympics was held from 5 to 13 August at the Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One of four archery events as part of the 2016 Olympic catalogue of sports, it was the fourteenth time a women's individual competition was contested as a discipline at the Olympic Games. Forty different nations qualified for the event, sending a total of sixty-four archers to compete. The defending Olympic champion was Ki Bo-bae of South Korea.
The women's individual recurve archery event at the 2015 Summer Universiade was held at the International Archery Center in Gwangju, South Korea from 4 July to 8 July 2015. It was the fifth time the event had been contested at the Summer Universiade and was its first appearance since the 2011 Summer Universiade, archery having not been selected as part of the sporting programme for the 2013 edition. Open to athletes aged between 17 and 28 enrolled in an undergraduate or postgraduate university programme, a total of fifty-eight archers from twenty-nine countries entered the competition.
Choi Mi-sun is a South Korean recurve archer. She won gold medal in the women's team event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Archery at the Pacific Games was first contested at the 1971 games at Papeete. Archery was made a core sport in 2021, and is thus required to be included at every subsequent edition of the Pacific Games. It has also been included in the Pacific Mini Games, firstly at Norfolk Island in 2001 and then Port Vila in 2017.
The women's individual archery event was one of five archery events held at the 2020 Summer Olympics. It was held at Yumenoshima Park. There were 64 competitors from 40 nations, with each nation having either 1 or 3 archers.
Archery at the 2019 Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa was held on 8–12 July 2019. The tournament was played on the outdoor target archery range at the Faleata Sports Complex in Tuanaimato, and included both recurve and compound bow events. Medals were awarded in men's and women's individual contests as well as for mixed team competitions.
The women's individual recurve competition at the 2019 European Games was held from 21 to 26 June 2019 at the Olympic Sports Complex in Minsk, Belarus. It was the second time the event was held as part of the European Games archery programme. A total of 48 archers from 32 different nations entered the competition, with a maximum of three entries per country. The event offered one qualifying spot for the women's individual event at the 2020 Summer Olympics for any archer reaching the semi-finals from a nation that had not already qualified. The defending champion, Karina Winter of Germany, did not take part following her retirement from the sport.
Archery at the 2021 Islamic Solidarity Games was held in Konya, Turkey from 14 to 18 August 2022. Traditional Turkish Archery Competitions was heldd at Saraçoglu Sports Venue between 15 and 16 August 2022. For individual competitions, qualification, elimination and final elimination round shots was done, and for team competitions, elimination and final elimination rounds of the teams was done. Qualification rounds in Archery was made accordingly: Men’s and Women’s Recurve bow was 70m. 720 rounds, and Men’s and Women’s Compound bow was 50m. 720 Rounds. Para Archery competitions was held in Saraçoğlu Sport Complex between 09-13 August 2022. Competitions were held in Recurve Bow, Compound Bow and W1 Bows was held in Senior category. The qualification rounds of the competition was done as 720 rounds 70 m for Recurve bows, and 720 rounds 50 m for Compound Bows. Individual elimination and final rounds was done in each category after qualification rounds.
The archery competitions at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are scheduled to run over a seven-day period, from 25 July to 4 August, at Les Invalides. 128 archers will compete across five events, with the successful mixed team recurve returning to the Olympic program for the second time.
