In 185 pages, they lay out all sorts of injury and death statistics, and they compare the US numbers against countries around the world.

There is some fascinating information. Belize, for example, has a rate of death from auto accidents of more than 44 per 100,000 while Albania, Singapore, and Sweden have 1.8, 5.4, and 5.5 deaths per 100,000. What about the death rate for autos in the US? around 18 deaths per 100,000.
Now, what's with Belize? The reading is a little fascinating. Smoking deaths? It's in there as well and it is not pretty.

One thing in the book, and the reason I did an inter-library loan to get ahold of the book, is a summary on sports injuries. Sports participation and injuries from the latest year, 2002 to be more precise.

Archery is estimated to have had 4,2000,000 U.S. participants in 2002, with 4,306 ER-reported injuries, a rate of 0.10252380952380952380952380952381 per cent. (0.1%)

Looking into archery injury demographics a little further, 17% of those injured are 5 to 14 year of age, 17% are 15-24, and whopping 61% are from 25 to 64 years of age. Obviously, those archers aged 65 and over are much more talented and wise in the saggitarial sense as less than 2% of archery-related injuries fall into this age group!

I have reviewed a number of ER reports (nearly 300) on archery injuries, and it is very difficult to derive many sound conclusions based on them. The problem is that nurses and doctors tend to look at archery as well, just pointy sticks and lump everything together. I can conclude that most serious presentations in ERs appear to be due to broadheads (stepping on them in a closet, for example, or simply putting them on to the shaft and slicing the finger off), falling out of tree stands, and that most severe injuries are from hunting-related accidents rather than target archery. Many less-serious presentations are due to string slap (hence totally avoidable) on the arm. Some were of the "Darwin Award" category and a few were sadly unsupervised youth activities.

This is not surprising since out of 43 records maintained by FITA (world and Olympic records), the Koreans hold 39 of them, and a case can be made that at least two of the others are held by acolytes of the "Korean Archery style". The highest FITA recurve score is held by a female Korean (1405) and she is only one of many, many Korean archers able to routinely shoot better than 1350. We do have some US archers able to shoot through the 1300 threshold, but amazingly few compared to Korea. So we presume there is some "Korean" secret or method, and in a way, there is.

First, I believe that the "Korean Archery" style is simply the US style taken to an efficient extreme in several ways. They started by observing our best archers such as McKinney and Pace, many years ago, and decided what worked best. Due to their culture they were able to single-mindedly pursue a goal of devising the best methodology by using their youth in training camps the likes of which have only been seen in East Germany in the 1960s. I am NOT implying the comparison in a negative way, just that the US could NOT have that kind of program due to our society's norms. But we CAN now benefit from their program.

The result of their efforts is that they have developed a method that is bio-mechanically sound and most importantly, devised a way of teaching this method consistently to coaches that insures the coaches are all on the same page. Korean Archers do not get mixed coaching messages even though they apparently always shoot under the direct supervision of at least several coaches (to insure no bad habits creep in).

If a Korean archer were to start shooting at 8am, and purposely adopted a flaw in his execution, and every 15 minutes throughout the day a different Korean coach came in to watch him shoot, chances are excellent that EVERY SINGLE COACH would see the same flaw and tell the archer exactly the same thing to correct it. In America, I would guess that the archer would get 5 different opinions from 10 different coaches and at least two of the coaches would diagnose target panic no matter what. Of course, that Korean archer typically shoots many hundreds of arrows, in some cases a 1000, each day, 6 days or more per week.

If there is anything we in the US can learn from the Koreans, is that we need to do a better job of teaching our coaches to be consistent. We now have a tool to contribute to that end that the "low-end" coaches that introduce our kids to archery, can easily add to their toolbox. I've not read a better book on archery than TOTAL ARCHERY, and one has to admire Kisik Lee and his expertise, his long history of producing champions.

This new book being circulated is called TOTAL ARCHERY, by Kisik Lee and Robert de Bondt. Kisik Lee is currently the head archery coach of the Australian Institute of Sports, and has many, many Olympic and World Champions to his credit. This book is a superb reference for the future of US archery. The photos are clear and deal specifically with the text, serving to clarify the written words.

The NArchival Archery is planning to carry this book and you should be able to obtain a copy soon. Please put it on your list, add it to your library right up there with the likes of McKinney's book (The Simple Art of Winning), Steve Ruis and Claudia Stevenson's compilation (Precision Archery), Ruth Rowe's book (Fundamentals of Recurve Archery), etc. and you won't regret it. Though you may find you will initially spend a good deal of time reading instead of shooting, your shooting will be the better for it.

A study of the ATHENS 2004 Paralympic Games TV coverage conducted in 17 countries has revealed that a total cumulated television audience of 1.852 billion viewed the event. The study was conducted by international sport sponsorship and media evaluation company IFM.

The study monitored 17 countries and Pan Europe (Eurosport and EuroNews) over the course of the Paralympic Games and found that 577 hours of total broadcasting time was screened on 102 channels. Japan had the greatest cumulative audience with over 587 million, closely followed by France (335 million), Germany (310 million) and China (309 million).

Despite having smaller cumulative audiences, the market share was high in New Zealand (26.4%), Switzerland (21.6%) and Austria (21.1%). Of the 17 countries, Brazil showed the greatest coverage of the Paralympics with a total of 168 hours of actual broadcast time, including 115 hours live, followed by Spain (124hrs whereof 31hrs live) and Greece (82hrs including 57hrs live). In addition, Reuters transmitted daily coverage to 446 clients in 200 countries. These numbers do not include affiliates which number in the thousands. Statistics for another 12 countries are still pending. A final report will be posted in March on the IPC website: www.paralympic.org.

Addendum by editor Carmichael: Televsion coverage in the United States amounted to a 2-hour long, heavily edited production sponsored by VISA and aired on "Outdoor Life Network" in November, more than a month after the closing of the games. It was very heavily laden with decent coverage of only a couple of sports (bicycling and swimming) , with some track and field and perhaps FIVE whole seconds of archery, this was all that US got to see.

Hopefully next time in Bejing there will be reasonable real-time or semi-live coverage in the US of the Paralympics.

By the way - TV viewership of the Olympic Games was approximately 4 billion people. There was a record number of TV viewers for the Athens Games, with USA: 95 million in first 2 days of Games (8-million more than Sydney), GERMANY: Reached 12.95 million (3.9 million more than Sydney) , and JAPAN: 15.6 million daily.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The National Archery Association (NAA) of the United States is pleased to announce the 9th Annual Traditional Archery Championships will be held July 29-31 in Colorado Springs, Colo. The site will be at Memorial Park in Colorado Springs, which is located at 1605 East Pikes Peak Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80909. Colorado Springs is 60 miles from Denver International Airport.

The NArchival Archery Dress Code for the Traditional Tournament has been amended to include the wearing of historical garb appropriate to the era.

Registration fees have also been reduced this year to $60 for Traditional only and $200 for a combination of the Traditional and National Target Championships.

The schedule for the Traditional Championships is as follows:

Friday, July 29 12:00 – 4:00 p.m. Traditional Official Practice

Saturday, July 20 8:00 – 8:30 a.m. Traditional Practice 8:45 a.m. Traditional National Championships

Sunday, July 31 8:00 – 8:30 a.m. Traditional Practice 8:45 a.m. Traditional National Championships 2:30 p.m. (approx.)Clout Tournament

You can expect the same excellent field conditions since the Blaschkes are offering the use of their exotic animals ranch again this year, so bring your cameras.