Program in Cavriglia (Agriturismo La Forra)

first qualification round 24 targets - unknown distances

Impression of the day:

We started fifteen minutes late today with the first qualification round, since we missed a couple of teams. It took more time than expected to get everyone from the hotels up the mountain and a couple of teams would have arrived with a closed warm up area if we would have kept the schedule. The warm up area is kind of special in this tournament. The archers shot their targets in between olive trees and also the tennis court was open for the archers.

I walked the blue course and most of the red course today. They were nice although the beautiful Tuscany setting is somewhat distracting. The area is indeed rather hilly, and the field architects provided the archers with some nice shots. In the red course over a valley that was rather tricky with the wind picking up in the afternoon. The terrain did not allow very extreme shots but we had some decent inclinations. And the olive trees provided highly appreciated shade nearly everywhere on both courses.  One problem had to do with the underground: it was sandy and at places covered with reed that made walking, although it was dry, still kinda slippy. A French junior lady discovered an unusual low viewpoint in one of those areas.

Another problem had to do with the buttresses. Morgan Lundin had a shoot through in the six of one of the targets, and his arrow flew forever and landed somewhere way down the hill in an olive garden. And maybe someone might find this arrow. Or maybe not. On other occasions he was lucky and the buttress stopped the arrow just at the nock. Jari Haavisto also had a shoot through at a different target and experienced the same problems with arrows nearly disappearing in the target.

The judges had a hard time today. Usually there are more judges and they oversee 4 targets each. Here they have to handle 6 targets each, in a course that is pretty much a one way course. I mean, they hardly have shortcuts that bring them from one target to another via a more or less safe route. So, shifting the paper from one place to another (less used place) on the buttresses will be a problem tomorrow, when the center of these targets will be hammered even worse in the marked round.