UK Student Archery Association

Olympic flame to burn students [15/Jul/11]

In less than one month's time, the opening ceremony of the 26th Summer Universiade will be taking place in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, see the event website. Archery is a sport at these games as it was in Belgrade in 2009. The 8th World University Champs in 2010 were held in this very city.

A sizeable British delegation of sports people, medics and administrators will make their way there, as will archers from a smorgasboard of nations. However, the crucial segment of the Venn diagram (from this website's perspective anyway) will be empty. BUCS and Archery GB are not funding any places, so there will be no British student archers present at Football Pitch One and Football Pitch Two on the Shenwanyi Road.

This event would also have marked the end of involvement for John Sullivan as this was the last event he intended to apply to be BUCS Team Manager. This is not the way he wanted to go out, particularly when some archers would have had funding in place, and there would have been the opportunity to self-fund, as in 2010.

[The following paragraphs have been re-written at the request of BUCS. 09/Aug/11]

Astonishingly however, the bad news does not end there, with a strong suggestion that the lack of funding which has characterised 2009 (1 archer), 2010 (4 self funded archers) and now 2011 will continue. BUCS say that there is - currently - no funding available for British student archers for the 2012 World University Champs in Cordoba, Spain, with Archery GB's focus firmly on London 2012.

The UKSAA website will attempt keep on top of developments through the Internationals section. The more pessimistic among you should note that at the 2013 Summer Universiade will be in Kazan, Russia, archery is not listed as one of the sports on their website, unlike belt wrestling, which is. The 2014 World University Archery Champs have not yet been attributed, but don't worry because the 2015 Summer Universiade will be in Gwangju, South Korea and archery is listed.