Woodenbong's world-travelling young archer Remy Leonard is back from the World Archery Field Championships held in Bray, near Dublin, Ireland.
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This time accompanied by his grandparents, Sharyn and Terry, they departed from Brisbane to Melbourne to Abu Dhabi in the UAE and onto Dublin after around 24 hours of flying time.
The week-long event attracted archers from 32 countries. Field archery consists of a number of round targets, similar but different to regular target archery, placed in natural bushland settings designed to make the archer work for the points.
At the commencement of the competition the archers took part in two practice days followed by the Opening Ceremony on the beach in Bray.
After the first day of competition, Remy shot 388 out of a possible 432 on the unmarked round of 24 targets. Unmarked means the distance to each target is unknown and has to be figured out by the archer. He ranked sixth at the end of the day after a broken nock and release issues.
The second of the ranking days was a marked round of 24 targets but the wind picked up a bit making the course a little more challenging, yet Remy still held sixth place for the following day's elimination rounds with a score of 384.
The road to the finals was through two elimination rounds; one of 12 targets to cull the field from 16 archers down to eight followed by a round of eight targets to find the final four archers who would shoot for the medals. In the first round Remy was in third place. Unfortunately, more wind and some rain showed up to further harass the competitors and saw a shootout for the fourth spot in the finals. Remy missed out by one point thus bringing his competition in Ireland to an end.
The Australian team still had two archers make it into the finals competing for the bronze medal but were outshot by other countries thus no Australian medals were forthcoming.
Remy found the experience a valuable one and also had a great time with friends old and new, and coming seventh in the world isn't too bad either. Since it is only Remy's first year competing internationally, any and all shoots are a learning experience and a chance to get his name out in the archery community. He continues to train daily and is grateful to his family and community (and his grandparents) for their continued support and encouragement.