Red, White & Blue

There's always a lot of press surrounding the Olympics for gymnastics, water sports and even volleyball.  Very little is shown about archery, but I did dredge up a few photos that blow my mind.

Like this one.  If you look close enough, you can see that all of the arrows are in the gold center.  We call this clustering and it's awesome when you can do it.  And man can these people do it!  And they're doing it from a serious distance.

If you blow up this image (click on it), those tiny little white squares below the olympics 2012 logo are the targets.  Let me give you some stats. The archery targets are roughly 48 inches in diameter. The gold ring in the middle is only 4.8 inches in diameter (and worth a maximum of 10 points).  The athletes shoot form a distance of 229 feet.  Putting this into a bit more perspective.  In the small tournaments I've shot, I'm shooting from a minimum of (20 meters) 65 feet to a maximum of (60 meters) 196 feet.  I'm pretty good at 20 meters and can hit the target clustering near the center (but not in the center).   I'm lucky to get to hit the target at all at 60 meters.  In all fairness, I use a recurve bow and these guys are sporting compound bows which allow them greater distance, power and accuracy, but still.

These guys are awesome.  They're the US Men's team and they took the silver this year at the Olympics.

They make me super proud and inspire me to try harder!

Seriously.. Thoughts?