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Did you know? But what exactly is dartchery...

23 août 2024

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Dartchery was contested in the Paralympics between 1960 and 1980.

Could darts and archery be combined and even be contested at the Olympics or Paralympics?

The answer is ‘Yes!’ and it has. That discipline exists and it’s called dartchery.

The event was one of the first eight sports included in the programme of the inaugural Paralympic Games in 1960 in Rome, Italy.

At the time, only team competitions were held and wheelchair athletes were eligible to participate.

The rules were simple and drew from both disciplines. Athletes shot arrows with a bow to a target set at a 20-metre distance. But the target face altered a lot from archery’s traditional 10-ring used, as it used a classical dart board with scattered numbers and 25- and 50-point rings placed right in the middle.

Each athlete shot three arrows per end. Teams started at 301 as in darts, and the goal was to reduce points with each shot and eventually reach an exact zero. The first team who did that took the win. If the score would fall below zero, it was reverted and the next athlete had his turn.

Originally, only a mixed team competition took place at the Paralympics. Only three pairs from two countries (USA and France) competed at the first event in 1960, and it was USA’s Jack Whitman and Wayne Broern who claimed gold.

Four years later, George Mann and Margaret Harriman from Rhodesia were crowned dartchery Paralympic Champions.

The disciplined gradually gained popularity, and in 1968, the number of participating countries raised to 18. More than 60 athletes took part in the event held at the Paralympics in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In 1972 in Heidelberg, new categories were introduced. The mixed team event remained, but both men and women also competed in doubles. The legendary Margaret Maughan paired with M. Cooper of Great Britain became the first Olympic Champions in the women’s competition.

With a total of four Paralympic golds in four different disciplines (archery, dartchery, swimming, lawn bowls), Maughan was gratefully rewarded for contribution to the Paralympics when she lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Games on home soil. She died at the age of 91 in 2020.

Medals in dartchery were awarded for the last time in 1980 in Arnhem.

Traditional archery was included at the very first Paralympic Games in Rome and has remained on the programme ever since. Darts has never been a single discipline, either at the Paralympics or the Olympics.

Header image courtesy of The Bridge.