19 Year Old Christopher Perkins Wins FITA World Archery Championship
OutdoorHub 08.03.11
In the final shoot-off in the 2011 FITA World Archery Championship Compound Men’s Individual class in Turin, Italy, two men stood at the line for a three-arrow shoot-off and shot head-to-head until the final round. On the last arrow, 19-year-old Christopher Perkins of Athens, Ontario, Canada, drilled the X on the target dead center with his PSE Dominator Pro Hybrid bow to win. Perkins, who had competed against 836 archers from 84-different countries, was one of only two shooters in the competition who was 19-years old or younger. Most of the archers in the tournament were seasoned competitive shooters. Perkins earned the privilege to represent Canada in this world tournament after winning Canada’s National Championship in Caledon near Toronto, Canada.
Who would have thought that a young teenager could hold his bow rock-solid steady for the biggest competition in the world and defeat some of the best target archers anywhere? Perkins only had had his PSE Dominator Hybrid Pro bow (www.pse-archery.com; www.bowblitz.com) for 3 months before the competition. But he says, “The PSE Dominator Pro felt so comfortable in my hand that I felt like I’d been shooting it my entire life.”How did this young archer accomplish this highest goal of a target archer? “I started shooting the bow with my dad, while getting ready to go hunting, and then we shot some 3D archery tournaments,” Perkins explains. “I liked target archery best and began competing in tournaments and winning. I went to as many competitions as I could and shot against world-class shooters to gain the confidence I needed to shoot on the international level. When I stepped to the line to shoot at the world championship, I focused only on the target and the shot I had to make. I didn’t think about the other competitors or the importance of this tournament. My goal at this tournament was to gain experience and hopefully finish in the top 20.”
However, when all the arrows had been shot and pulled-out of the targets, Perkins stood alone as the world’s best men’s target archer. When asked, “Where do you go from here?” Perkins smiled and answered, “I don’t know. I’m still letting that championship sink-in. But I hope to be shooting tournament archery for a long time.”
