Kõrvemaa sport center trades skis for field archery
Nearly 400 athletes gathered at the Sportland Kõrvemaa Hiking and Skiing Center near Aegviidu in Harju County at the weekend, for the European Championships in field archery.
Field archery is any archery discipline that involves shooting at outdoor targets of varying and often unmarked distance, typically in woodland and rough terrain.
The venue as its name suggests is usually used for skiing events, but according to head organizer Katrin Virula the switch from skis and ski poles to bows and quivers was something of a fortuitous chain of events.
"Last year there was a real danger that the European Championships would be canceled, because Romania backed out as the host country, and since we had just recently gone through the experience, to keep the tradition alive – we took it upon ourselves," Virula told ERR. That recent experience came in 2022 when the venue hosted the 2020 world championships, postponed due to the Covid pandemic.
This year's competition lasted five days, including one day which involved shooting at images of animals, such as hares, ducks and foxes instead of the more familiar bullseye-type targets. Organizing competitions like this is a challenge, Virula said, as designing the courses requires creativity.
"We have set up four different courses in the forest facing different directions, but one course consists of 28 shooting positions, meaning 112 targets, and the shooting distance for Estonians ranges from six to 73 meters," she explained.
World champion and three-time European champion Kristo Kent likened this type of archery to a round of golf in its variety. "You move from one nest to another and shoot at different targets, and it constantly varies," he outlined. "It's not monotonous – one distance and one target – but they are different and made in very different ways."
Kent has been practicing archery for nearly 20 years and says he finds it a great way to take your mind off things. "If you want to get away from thoughts of work, then when you come to a competition like this for five days, you're in a completely different environment, a different world. If you want a vacation and a good hobby, then it's a really cool sport."
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
