Archery was a feature of the Olympic Games from 1900 to 1920, becoming, in 1904, one of the first Olympic sports to include women. It was then off the programme for slightly over 50 years. In 1961 Inger Frith became President of the International Archery Federation – the first woman to serve as president of an international sports federation – and largely through her efforts archery returned to the Olympic programme in 1972. At the 2004 Athens Games, the archery events were staged in the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the first modern Olympic Games had taken place in 1896.

In 1992, head-to-head match play was introduced in an effort to make the event a more exciting spectacle. This vastly improved the sport from a spectator perspective and also helped the sport’s ratings on television.

Modern Olympic archery has four events, with men and women competing in both individual and team events. The team event was introduced at the 1988 Seoul Games for the first time.

At the Olympic Games, archers shoot at targets 70 metres away. The target is 1.22 metres in diameter and marked with 10 concentric rings. Individual archers compete in head-to-head matches in single elimination after being ranked from 1 to 64 during qualifications. In each contest both archers shoot 12 arrows and only the winner moves on. Teams are made up of three archers, and team events follow the same competition format as individual events.