Archery has a rich and long history, dating back many thousands of years. The invention of the bow and arrow was a breakthrough in ancient times, particularly in hunting for food and in defence against wild beasts. There is evidence of the Egyptians using the bow and arrow for hunting and warfare and the civilisations in the land of the Bible did likewise. There was archery in China nearly two millennia before the birth of Christ. The French felt the might of English archers a number of times in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The first large-scale archery competition in England was held in the late 1500s and very soon thereafter, the advent of effective and efficient guns superseded the bow and arrow as a battle weapon.  From then on archery was a pastime and a sport.

The sport of archery was introduced to Australia by European settlers in the 1840s and 1850s and gained in popularity until the 1880s when it virtually disappeared for 40 years, until it was revived in the 1920s.

Archery became an Olympic sport for men and women in Paris in 1900 and continued at St Louis 1904, London 1908 and Antwerp 1920 after which it was removed from the Olympic program. The eminent Olympic historian, David Wallechinsky, has questioned the Olympic status of the events in 1900 and 1904 as he believes that they were national championships. However, the International Olympic Committee's database records the medal winners from those Olympics.

Archery returned to the Olympic fold in Munich in 1972 with men’s and women’s individual events. Events for three-person teams were added in Seoul in 1988.

In all four events archers shot at targets 70 metres away. The target is 1.22 metres in diameter and marked with 10 concentric rings. The centre ring, or bullseye, measures 12.2 centimetres in diameter, and counts 10 points. The outer ring counts one, and the rings in between increase by one point in value as they near the centre.

Archers, or teams, compete in head-to-head matches in single elimination after being ranked from one to 64. The semi-finals winners decide the gold and silver medals in the final, and the semi-finals losers shoot for the bronze.

Australia has been represented in archery at every Olympics since its return in Munich. South Australia’s Simon Fairweather won the gold medal in the individual men’s event at Sydney 2000 nine years after being world champion. In Athens four years later Tim Cuddihy, still a schoolboy, finished third in the individual men’s event.  

For many years, it was thought that Donald MacKintosh had won Australia’s first archery medal, a gold, in the game shooting event in Paris in 1900. It took almost ninety years for it to be confirmed that the game shooting was in fact a shooting event.

Australia's Terry Reilly, a two-time Olympic archer (1972 and 1976) was the executive director of the International Archery Federation from 2002-2005.

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