Master Archer Has Gold Star Pin In His Sights

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 17

Master Archer Has Gold Star Pin In His Sights

Christchurch Archery J Club’s master archer, F. W. Green, will have good prospects of becoming the second South Islander to win the coveted gold star pin of the Federated International ..Target Archery, when with six other members of the club, he competes in a F.I.T.A. gold star shoot at Timaru on Sunday. Green, who won the New Zealand national open and limited flight titles at Petone last January, has been concentrating on target shooting in recent months. The object of his competing on Sunday is to win the gold star pin by gaining 1000 or more points in the F.I.T.A. shoot. The international body, with headquarters in England, allots 10 Gold Star shoots to New Zealand each year.

This shoot, which will be the third and final one in the South Island, will follow the international formula of a shoulder-to-shoulder competition in which a total of 144 arrows are fired in the following four stages: six arrows at six ends from a distance of 90 metres on to a 120-centimetre face; a further 36 arrows from 70 metres at the same sized face; 36 arrows from 50 metres, and a further 36 from 30 metres on to an 80centimetre face. On each target are 10 concentric circles, each circle representing certain points: from one in the outer circle to 10 for an inner gold. Green in recent seasons has concentrated on flight (long distance) shooting, but since his exceptional success at Petone in the new year he has gone a long way to regaining the target shoot-

log skill that brought him nine scores of 1000 or more in various club shoots between 1960 and 1965. In his best seasons, 1962 and 1963, Green used to do a fair imitation of William Tell by splitting an apple (suspended by string) from 30 paces. And in the national championships at Wellington in that period he set the standing national clout record of 292 points. Green’s other records, the New Zealand and national open flight, were set at Petone in January when he recorded 683yds 7in. Although he has nine times bettered the score of 1000, Green has never done so in a F.I.T.A. gold'star competition; his best score at this level is 905, and his best in a non-gold star event is 1084, which, when fired

in 1963, was a South Island record. The only South Island holder of a gold star pin is B. Gillan (Dunedin), a New Zealand representative against Australia. Green shot the Christchurch club’s highest F.I.T.A. score this year (954), and is reasonably confident that his Burwood Park total can be bettered at Timaru. S. Davis is the only other Christchurch club member to have scored 1000 In any class of F.LT.A. shoot The only North Islander competing on Sunday will be D. Dixon (Matamata), who is New Zealand’s only active grand master archer. The other Christchurch competitors will be B. McClare, K. Day, S. Burton, M. Kohout, G. Taylor, and Mrs J. Cattermole.