2024 Paris Olympics Archery

The 2024 Olympics Archery Event will see the finest athletes in the sport converge in Paris to display their talent and compete for medals.

Over seven days between 25 July and 4 August, 128 archers – 64 for each gender – will compete across five events including the mixed team recurve which is returning to the Olympics for the second time.

Archery is one of the oldest sports still practised today as it is closely linked to the development of human civilisation given its use for hunting and warfare. The first recorded archery tournaments took place in the People’s Republic of China during the Zhou dynasty (1027‑256 BC).

Archery first featured at the Olympic Games of Paris 1900 and it was contested for the next four Games until a 52-year hiatus from the programme.  In 1931, the sport evolved around the globe and the International Archery Federation, now known as World Archery, was founded.

Since being reintroduced to the Games at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Archery has remained on the Olympic programme ever since.

The qualification stage allows each National Olympic Committee (NOC) to enter a maximum of six archers, three per gender. Countries that qualify for a gender-based team recurve can select three members to form a squad, ensuring that each of them must compete in the individual recurve.

Overall, 12 slots are available for each gender in the team recurve events, with 36 athletes competing against each other through a team-based qualification pathway. While three tickets remain available at the final qualifying meet, they will be assigned to those who climb the podium.

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The other five tickets will be given to the continental team champions from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and the top two teams seeking qualification through the world rankings after the final qualifying meet. Host nation France reserves three quota places each for the men’s and women’s events, along with the mixed team recurve.

During the Olympics, targets are 122cm in diameter and positioned 70m away from the archers, who must shoot their arrows as close to the centre of the target as possible to beat their opponents. Archery requires great concentration and dexterity as there are very little margins for error, Individual competitions at the Games begin with the ranking round, where each of the 64 archers shoots 72 arrows to determine their ranking for the single-elimination bracket.

The athletes compete in this knockout system until the final according to their ranking, with the top‑ranked archer facing off against the 64th‑ranked archer, the second‑ranked against the 63rd‑ranked, and so on. Indeed, the team event uses the same ranking results from the individual competition to determine seeding for the teams; the top four teams receive a bye into the quarterfinals, while the rest compete in a single-elimination bracket.

Event tickets

The 2024 Olympic Games Archery Events will begin on Thursday 25 July with the action starting with the Women’s Individual Ranking Round at 9:30 AM UK time. Interested spectators must apply for Paris Olympics 2024 tickets on the official ticketing application to receive their tickets or put them back on sale.

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All the archery events will take place at Les Invalides which is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Built-in the 1670s as a military hospital and retirement home for war veterans, it is now a museum housing the tomb of Napoleon and a befitting scenery for such a historic sport.

The games will take place in the tree-flanked gardens with a capacity of 8,000 spectators. Hence, supporters must get their Paris Olympics 2024 Archery tickets on time and they can do so on a ticket resale site.

Team news

Team USA’s Brady Ellison is in line to make an unprecedented fifth Olympic Games which will tie the U.S. record for the most appearances in archery at the Games. The three-time Olympic medalist is still at the top of his game at 35 years old having lingered around the top of the world rankings since he was a teenager.

South Korea’s Recurve men’s line-up includes the tried and trusted Kim Woojin, Kim Je Deok and Lee Wooseok; but there are a few surprises in the women’s team who have won every single Olympic team title since the introduction of the event at the Seoul 1988 Olympics.

Lim Sihyeon, last year’s breakout star, will lead rookies like Jeon Hunyoung and Nam Suhyeon to defend an unprecedented 10th consecutive Olympic team title. Given the tough and gruelling qualification process set in place for Korean Archers, these are the very best athletes in the country and they will be confident of getting the job done.

Prediction

The Republic of Korea has been the most successful in archery at the Olympics having won 27 gold, nine silver, and seven bronze for a total of 43 medals. The USA are second on the all-time list after winning 33 medals (14 gold) but South Korea were yet the best archery team at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics with four golds.

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There may be plenty of attention on the inexperience within the ranks of the women’s team but the men’s roster will arrive in Paris as heavy favourites for a third Olympic gold medal in a row.

In the Men’s event, Mete Gazoz is one to keep an eye on after becoming the first Turkish archer to win individual gold in Olympic history in Tokyo.

Gazoz now heads to Paris as the favourite to reclaim his title after a strong 2023 in which he won individual gold at the World Archery Championships and earned his third career title of Best Men’s Recurve Archer of the Year from the World Archery Federation.

For the women’s competition, Casey Kaufhold is the USA’s best chance of winning a medal which would make her the first American woman to do so since the 1976 Montreal Games. Kaufhold made her Olympic debut during the Olympics but she is the top-ranked women’s archer in the world.

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