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Of unsafe ranges and stray arrows

26 June 2009

An archery range in Juangzhina, Thimphu, across a footpath

An archery range in Juangzhina, Thimphu, across a footpath

A spectator recollects narrowly escaping being hit by a stray arrow. Another man, who was actually hit by an arrow during a friendly match, bears a scar on his leg. Recently, a boy was hit by a stray arrow in the head.

Although the archery federation has some tentative criteria for safety measures, there are archery ranges across footpaths, fields, or beside roads without any safety measures.

The Bhutan Archery Federation (BAF) has recently come up with a tentative draft requirement of an archery range. According to the new criteria, an archery range should have a minimum length of 200 metres and width of 20 metres. In case the length cannot be met, a six metres high wall should be built behind the target.

The criteria of 20 metres width may not be compulsory if there are no spectators but it should at least be 10 metres. Every archery range must have a proper signboard warning people.

The actual range for the compound bow is 145 metres and for the bamboo bow, it is 140 metres.

“We are trying this with some archery ranges and the federation is studying why accidents happen because we are concerned about the safety of the people,” said the president of BAF, former minister, Kinzang Dorji.

He said accidents mostly happened when there was a bigger crowd. To ensure that the accidents are minimised, archers will not be allowed to draw their bows sidewise. If an archer hits someone outside the range, he will be banned from playing archery.

Thimphu municipal area alone has 17 archery ranges. Three of them are private, seven are within institutions and seven on public grounds. The BAF president said that, within Thimphu city itself, more than 20 ranges have been closed down. “In the early 1980s, I played on most of them,” he said.

Tsewang Rinchen, the Secretary General of Yangphel Archery, said accidents are caused not only by unsafe archery ranges, but also by individual archers.

He said that unsafe archery ranges are a part and parcel of our mountainous country. Even grounds unused for agriculture or construction are converted into archery ranges owing to the increasing number of archers.

“The number of archers is increasing, and technically, the bows are also stronger and with a lot of spectators if there is any accident, it will be a deadly one,” he said.

Keeping the safety issue is mind, this year, Yangphel will be making all the archers in their tournament draw their bows backwards. Moreover, consumption of alcohol will be limited. The umpire can disqualify any archer whose arrow is pointing towards waiting archers or spectators while drawing the bow.

The umpire will call a substitution if an archer is totally intoxicated or disabled to shoot his arrows safely.

During the game, any player who miss-shoots more than once, will not be allowed to play further.

“We will be building four safety walls at the end of the targets because we do not want to compromise safety,” said Tsewang.

BY TANDIN PEM

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