Danes shoot 24-hour competition… for fun?

World Championship team winners in 2013, Martin Damsbo, Patrick Laursen and Stephan Hansen were back on the line together this past weekend – for a completely different style of tournament.

Teams began shooting at 12-midday on Saturday and finished on 12-midday on Sunday, a full 24 hours later.

The competition, Dambso explained, was a similar structure to the Le Mans race. Only one archer had to compete at any one time, while the others could relax, sleep or practice, then they would swap in and out whenever the one shooting got tired.

Team Farfar, Barnsefar and Slikkepad – that’s something like ‘Grandpa, teddybear and lollipop’ in English – took gold in the open competition.

They shot 990 arrows on the 4-centimetre recurve 10 (used in Las Vegas), and scored 9892 points – or, in other words, just eight arrows outside the middle… in 24 hours.

Lollipop (Hansen), was the star of the show.

He shot perfect, never missing the 10-ring in his approximately 330 arrows on the line for the team. Teddybear (Laursen) missed three – while Grandpa (Damsbo), the oldest of the three, dropped five.

“It’s a big challenge for each individual archer,” Dambso said. “How will your mind and body react?”

“The funny part is that most shooters shot a personal best or at least their best score of the weekend in the middle of the night, when the brain stopped working and the body took over.”

Throughout the night, archers had the chance to win prizes in mini-competitions – so those up-and-down the results list could walk away with something.

“Archery is always such hard competition, but here it’s fun to see how people change after so many hours. People relax, enjoy and have fun. They do archery as they are supposed to – having fun – which many people forget,” added Martin.

“It’s a great way to interact with other archers.”

The event was heavily oversubscribed. Organisers expected around 20 teams, and had to start turning people away at 44 – archers came from as far away as Germany and Australia to compete – and the team is looking for a bigger hall for future editions.

Who wants to give this a go next year?