Archery Olympic Round
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The Olympic Round was introduced to target archery so that it could become more watchable as a competitive sport, the main focus of this being for the Olympics when shown on television. The round was developed by the World Archery Federation (WA; formerly FITA). It is used at the Olympic Games,[1] the Archery World Cup[2] and in many lower profile or local tournaments.
A qualifying round is shot to order the competitors and give them a seeding. The qualifying round is usually a WA 70m round, consisting of 72 arrows shot at a distance of 70 meters. These seedings are then sorted into head-to-head matches.
Each match consists of 4 ends of 3 arrows, giving a 12-arrow match shot at a distance of 70 meters on a 122 cm target face. In early stages of the elimination rounds this may be changed to 2 ends of 6 arrows in order to save time. In later stages and at the Olympics and World Cup the shooting order alternates with each archer shooting one arrow at a time, having 40 seconds to shoot each arrow.[3] The highest placed athlete in the qualification round will decide the order of shooting of the first end. The athlete with the lowest cumulative score will shoot first at the next end. If the athletes are tied, the athlete that shot first in the first end shoots first in the next end. The archer with the highest score at the end of the 12 arrows is declared the winner.
In the event of a tie each archer shoots a single arrow; the archer with the highest scoring arrow wins. If there is still a tie a second single arrow is shot, and, if required, a third. On the third arrow if there is still a tie the archer with the arrow closest to the center is the winner. If an archer shoots after their time of 40 seconds or at the wrong time they will lose their highest scoring arrow.