Archery GB national 50+ championship. 

The Chairman recently competed in the Archery GB national 50+ championship. Here is his story.

I took part in the National over 50s championship on Saturday 1st August 2026.

I had three objectives before I shot. 1, shoot a qualification round of at least 500 points, 2, Finish in the top 10 over 65 open recurve and 3, make the cut for the head-to-head round (The cut off would be the top 64 archers in my competition, as there were 74 entered). This round is know as 1/32, as it I of 32 matches

The weekend started with a drive down to Warwick for an overnight stay in a hotel. Of course, being me, it was not that simple. Early afternoon I set out but to go via West London to pick up my wife from her mums, then on to the hotel. The traffic was as you would expect on a Friday afternoon, extremely heavy. Got to the hotel had something to eat and a couple of beers, then stayed a wake for ages not being able to get to sleep. Finally, after maybe three hours sleep up for breakfast and out to the shoot.

On arrival at Evesham archer’s ground, the field was set out with 32 targets, I was all the way down the other end from the carpark on target 27. Today was the Recurve and Longbow Day, all shooting at a full sized face at 60M. Tomorrow would be the turn of the Compound and barebow archers as they shoot at 50M.

Pitched my tent, put the bow together and went through equipment inspection, this has to be done at every record status event just to make everything complies with the rules. 

When I went to meet the others shooting on my target and there was only one other, Dan form Harlequin Bowmen, Oxfordshire. That made it nice and easy on the shooting line plenty of room and only 2 scores to record. Just to let you know at a record status shoot there has to be double scoring, I took the papersheet and Dan completed the electronic device. 

Three ends of official practice and then into the scoring round. Qualifying was 6 dozen arrows at 60M. I was starting to get some consistency in the third dozen when we stopped for a short break. Restart was not as good then. My target was 500, my score was 495 due to a miss in each of the last two ends. That objective missed but still a season’s best for that round, oh well what could have been.

In the 65+ competition I ended up 11th, missing out on 10th by only 8 points. In fact, if I had scored 11 points with those two misses, I would have been 8th. 

I did make the cut off for the head to heads. This was due to the fact that in the end there were only 60 archers taking part in the recurve open shoot, as some did not make it. 

I qualified 53rd. This meant I would be up against the archer who qualified 12, scoring 606 in his qualification. Moved to target 10 for my match. 2 ends of practice. That totals 102 arrows before the match even started, I was by now feeling pretty tired. However, got to give it a go. As predicted, I lost the match after three ends.  

2 out of three objectives missed, totally shattered on the drive home, would I do it again? Of course. bring on next year!

Suzi who shoots with Grey Goose and shot with us indoors last year, achieved 12th out of 21 recurve ladies. 

If you would like to see the full results of this and many other competitions in the UK and worldwide visit the Ianseco website. 

Cheers for now John Bruce