James Ryan only an arrow shoot away from next European Championships

On October 11th, James Ryan, representing UCD archery club, won the 16th Greenhills Anniversary Shoot in Olympic recurve category. Scoring during the competition an unofficial Interversity League record of 578, he outperformed his own record from March this year in the Limerick Interversity Shoot by 20 points. Another performance like this would secure James a place in the oncoming European Indoor Championships.

In indoor competitions, advanced archers shoot from a distance of 18m on target faces of 40cm diameter marked with 10 evenly spaced concentric rings. In order to achieve the maximum score of 10, the archer has to hit the inner ring of the centre which is only 4cm in diameter. For competitions in the Interversity League (IV), 60 arrows, a so-called FITA (Fédération Internationale de Tir à l'Arc) round, are shot while Greenhills was a double FITA round of 120 arrows. James’ final score was an impressive 1149 out of 1200 possible points. Since the Greenhills Shoot is not part of the Interversity League it is up until now uncertain the record will be acknowledged as an IV record. Nevertheless, it is for sure the highest score achieved by a student archer in Ireland so far. Whether the record is recognized or not, James Ryan has set a benchmark for the first IV of this season which will be held in DCU on November 7th. So fingers crossed for James and the UCD archery team!