The Chengdu 2025 World Games archery competition enters its final three days on 14-16 August, with the barebow field competition in Qinglong Lake Park.
Both Simon Fairweather, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games champion, and his wife Nicky Fairweather will be competing in barebow for Australia, part of a Aussie team that has put at least one archer in every event in Chengdu. As well as his win in Sydney, Simon competed in a total of five Olympic Games for Australia, and was World Champion in 1991.
Both Fairweathers shot recurve at the 2016 Dublin World Field Championships, but started shooting barebow seriously after a trip to Lancaster in 2019, a visit caused by their business producing archery tabs. “We had dabbled in barebow just to get an idea of what was needed for a tab. And then I guess got bitten by the bug, so to speak, and persisted from there,” said Simon.
While they intended to shoot barebow at the 2022 edition of the World Games in Birmingham, the chaos caused by the pandemic meant they were unable to make the qualifying tournament. “We weren’t allowed out of the country at that stage. And that was that,” he said.
Undeterred, they focused their attention on making it to Chengdu in 2025. Both completed with 9th place finishes at the Lac La Biche 2024 World Archery Field Championships, the primary qualifying tournament. “When we got back from the world field last year, we we left straight back into training because we knew there would be a selection event within Australia to pick to decide who would get the spots for the World Games.”
While archery is in good health in Australia, barebow is still very much a minority interest. “Perhaps some of the other barebow archers took their foot off the gas, but we didn’t. We did a lot of quality training; it’s hard to actually find somewhere to do a decent field course, but in terms of our regular day-in-day-out practice, we did a lot. In the end, we were a long way ahead of everyone,” said Simon.
”However, the day after that selection event was when I was interviewed for the head coach’s role. And that changed everything.”
