Bringing Home the Bacon

Yesterday, I went to an archery competition in Terni (actually I'm fairly certain it was a suburb of Terni) and I rocked. At 7:15, I walked outside our door in medieval costume just as Matteo and Alessio were pulling up. At that point, we headed to their favourite bar, the one they always go to before a competition. Then we parked on the side of a road somewhere to meet their uncle, Riccardo. Alessio decided to ride with Riccardo, and we were off caravanning the whole way (because who doesn't like caravanning?).

When we got there, after much futzing around, we headed to the main area of town (there actually wasn't much of one; it was more of the meeting of two large roads) and there was much mindless chatter all around. And there was breakfast for those who hadn't had any. There were about half the number of people that there usually are, because this competition was limited to Umbrian archers; the only non-Umbrian there was the judge (I didn't count because I live here).

There were only ten targets and I did really well, scoring 161 points, only 10 fewer than Matteo (that's two arrows' difference). Matteo was really proud of me and he kept commenting on "the student's beating the master" and "guess who taught her?" and other comments of that sort. It made me feel about 100 feet tall.

There were all sorts of interesting targets, the last one was testing consistency: the target was a plain hay target and you shot three arrows at it. Once everyone had shot, we went up and used circles to see how close they were together. If you got all the arrows within the smaller circumference you got 8 points each and if you got them within the larger circumference, they were worth 5 points each. I was within the five-point circle.

Another fun target was the one with an ax swinging back and forth in front of it; it was timed. In this case, the target was in the middle rather than having one on each side for pairs of archers. I broke an arrow on that one AND got 0 points. I was not amused.

There was another unusual target. I'll see if I can find a picture of it, but it looked a bit like an exaggeratedly curvy Templar's cross indented into the target. The middle was painted yellow and was worth -6 points. You had four arrows, and the goal was to hit each blue area (which were worth 6 points each). Most of the targets were animals, but I'll see what pictures I can find and explain them if I can.

I'm in the centre with my back to the camera 

The score card 

You had to shoot the yellow one first,
 then you could shoot the red one
 and then, if you hadn't missed, the blue one 

You had to shoot the three red squares here.
If you shot all three, you could try to hit the green rectangle.

This is the target with the circles 

This was the ax target

This was the cross. Sorry it's so hard to see.

You had to shoot the "candles" in the windows.
It was darker than it looks.
The door was to the right, which gave the right hand archer a bit of a disadvantage.

After we had gone through all the targets in sweltering heat (it was absolutely boiling) we had lunch, which consisted of pasta, breaded and fried pork (it wasn't as bad as it sounds) and the odds and ends left over from breakfast as a dessert. And then there were the finals. Matteo was highly annoyed because he had qualified (it meant that he had to stay, and he was ready to go home!). For the finals, each team had to send its best four archers to compete for a flag that basically says, "We're the best." This was in the middle of the afternoon. Can I tell you how hot it was?

And Arcus Tuder went last (because the total of our best archers was the highest). So we had to wait. And wait. And wait. And slowly melt. We finally got to go. ANNNNND…. it was a tie. So Arcus Tuder and another team had to shoot again (after much argument). And Arcus Tuder won!

The finalists had to shoot the ROPE and ring the bell.
Then they had to knock the cylinders off their magnets.
Then they had to break the sword down by breaking a supporting tile,
 and finally they had to attempt to shoot two arrows
 in two different sections of the blue and yellow circle using up to four arrows.

Those of us who braved the heat.

The finalists 

All the archers who stayed to see the finals 

Arcus Tuder shooting 

I was very surprised when I was called over during the prize giving. Turns out, I got the best score out of all of the women. The first place prize: over a kilo of dried sausages.

Me and my prize 

Ciao,

Florence