The sun defied the monsoon rains for a few hours on Sunday 11th October and shone for Pattaya Archery Club’s most unique fun shoot. The eventual winner was Siripraphai Hearn, the only woman shooting on that day. Her prize was a voucher for two breakfasts at the prestigious Marriott Hotel in Second Road.
Siripraphai’s achievement was all that more remarkable as she had not picked up a bow in over two years due to a medical problem with her wrist. She shot her bow just two weeks prior to the tournament for the first time since her wrist gave out on her, but such a long lay-off did not diminish her skill, she shot exceptionally well. The final target was a long slim balloon, just two centimetres wide, swinging in the wind on a target 18 metres away. She nailed it with one arrow. Brilliant shooting!
Pattaya archers pose for a group photo at the fun shoot on October 11.
There were five Thai archers in total taking part … four men in wheelchairs and Siripraphai. Their opponents were six foreign archers, one each from England, Wales, Germany, France, USA and Russia. The Thais were the better shots, aiming at targets including green plastic bottles, balloons and a unique, never-seen-before, star shaped target, based on playing cards and dice.
During the competition there was a lot of cheering, clapping, joking and laughter amongst the club members present. All the credit for this was due to the ingenuity and unconventional thinking of Joachim Albrecht, a long-time club member from Germany. He had volunteered to organise a fun shoot which would be different from other fun shoots the club had held in the past. And in that respect he was outstandingly successful.
Nobody knew until the very end who had won, as Joachim had devised a twist in the tail. The roll of a dice gave a loading to each competitor’s scores.
Siripraphai Hearn lines up the golden shot.
Over a long archery career in England, the club’s 73-year-old President, Eric Hearn … yes, the husband of the winner … had attended many fun shoots all over southern England and yet had never seen such an ingenious, original, and cleverly-organised fun shoot before. All credit to Joachim.
All archery competitions are normally won by the highest-scoring archer. But that did not happen here. Joachim wanted to design a competition where the type of bow and the archer’s degree of skill did not matter at all. He wanted a level playing field. His objective was to organise a pure fun shoot where good archers with modern Olympic-style recurve bows had no advantage over novice archers with less sophisticated bows.
The club’s best archer, Philippe Bach from France, was shooting his Olympic-style recurve bow with a sight, stabilisers, and carbon arrows with spinwing plastic fletchings. The total opposite to Philippe’s modern bow was Eric’s medieval-style Hungarian horse bow, a centuries-old design which shot wooden arrows with turkey feather fletchings. This was the most difficult-to-shoot bow in the competition as it has no sight, is very short, very powerful and very unforgiving. Nowhere near as easy to shoot as an Olympic-style recurve bow, but then that’s the fun and challenge of archery.
Yet Eric, who shot his horse bow immediately before his wife made her winning shot, put his last wooden arrow right next to the balloon. Just a couple of millimetres away from bursting it. He laughingly suggested his arrow had acted like a path-finder for Siripraphai’s winning shot, but no one believed him.
The youngest archer was Herman Gnezdilov, a 12-year-old boy from Russia, He was shooting a club bow he had never shot before, and yet was able to put some arrows very near the target.
Pattaya Archery Club President Eric Hearn (left) presents the first prize to his wife Siripraphai.
The Thai men in wheelchairs, Wisit, Piya, Ter and Suphan were all past students at the Redemptorist Vocational School for the Disabled, in central Pattaya. They are all excellent shots and scored well in the competition. They started their archery careers by being coached at the Pattaya Archery Club’s range in Hua Yai, on the outskirts of Pattaya.
The newest club member with the least archery experience was the American Patrick Quinn, only everyone knows him as ‘Paco’. He was shooting a modern recurve bow with no sight or stabilisers, and was particularly successful at piercing a hanging green plastic bottle swinging in the breeze 18 metres away.
When Joachim had totalled the scores, it was left to the President to present the prize to his wife. Keep it in the family! Everyone heartedly applauded Joachim for his outstanding contribution to a morning of very unusual archery. A real FUN shoot in every sense of that word. It was just as well he was doing the organising and scoring, and not taking part in the shooting … for he is a very accurate archer, and would have been a formidable opponent … despite shooting a modern recurve bow with no sight or stabilisers.
Trying archery in Pattaya
Pattaya Archery Club meets on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, beginning at 10.00 am and finishing at about noon or thereafter. Everyone is welcome to come along to the Pattaya Shooting and Adventure Park in Hua Yai and find out what it is all about.
Beginners’ coaching is held on any of the club’s meeting days. The coach’s services and the use of the club’s bows, arrows and other equipment are free for beginners, and so it costs nothing to see if this challenging sport is for you.
For more details and a map of the archery range’s location, visit Pattaya Archery Club’s website at www. pattayaarcheryclub.com, or telephone Eric, the club’s President, on 089 535 1193.
