Program in Saignes

8.30 -  accreditation 

10.00 - 14.00 officical practice and equipment inspection

13.30 teamcaptain meeting

17.00 opening ceremony

Impression of the day:

Today was the official training and equipment inspection at the European Championships Field Archery in Champagnac, France. We were complete, except for the Norwegian team. They had their national championship this weekend and only left after the championship. Interesting planning I must say. We also missed Pasi Ahjokivi this morning, his plane was overbooked and he could not fly from Paris to here. All of these archers were in time for the opening ceremony though.

The material inspection was rather uneventful. One sight had a circle, crosshair and a dot, and was therefore ruled out. And a compound archer showed up with a bow weight over 60 pounds and needed to readjust the poundage of the bow. Other than that, there was nothing to write about. Which is odd, since World or European Championships are typically an occasion to bring new material to a field and get a ruling about whether it is allowed or not in competition. Someone made a remark this may be because of the recession and people don't have new stuff, but since we saw quite a few new limbs today that seems unlikely.

We spoke with Martin Ottosson from Sweden who was using a different bow than we are used to and he told us his own bow was stolen from his house two weeks ago. His own bow is from a small bow manufacturer (that has very little stock) so he had to borrow another bow to make up for the loss and be able to enter this tournament. Being able to shoot only 200 arrows with this bow he was a bit worried about his achievement during this tournament. And Göran Bjerendal looked puzzled today. He had prepared his arrows last week with bigger vanes and the distances on his sight were off very much because of it. The deviation was inconsistent too and he needed to make lots of adjustments. Well, the practice round is just perfect for that with targets on all distances available and we hope all archers took advantage of it.

The opening ceremony started at five and the temperature was still rather high in the center of Saignes. The ceremony started just a little late and the archers slipped out one by one into the local bar to get themselves ice cream to cool down and kill some time. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. The ceremony took about half an hour and afterwards the archers had a little get-together in the local 'Salle des fêtes'. Tomorrow the temperature will be higher, but the forecast says it will be less humid. Let's wait and see.