Ella Gibson, the world’s number one compound archer, set a new world record at Woking Archery Club as they hosted the Archery GB National Tour.

The event nearly didn’t happen after a fire meant there were no archery targets and no archery venue.

A fire at Tenzone Targets in Hampshire in December 2023 consumed their workshop and stock of tournament targets.

This impacted the Surrey Archery Weekend, which had been due to host the Archery GB National Tour in July at Tolworth and required 70 targets. With Tenzone Targets owner Steve Olding only able to supply a fraction of these in the timescale, the event became unviable.

Woking Archery Club stepped in and offered their field at Wisley as a substitute venue for a smaller, two-day shoot format instead. And so the third leg of the Archery GB National Tour was held in Woking with 268 archers from all over the UK attending, along with some international visitors.

On the Saturday Woking hosted the Olympic format recurve day, which was attended by the full quota of Team GB Olympic archers two days before they set off for the Paris Olympics. Over lunch, to the delight of the competitors, an exhibition team match was arranged between the Team GB Olympic women and the Team GB Olympic men in which the men triumphed.

Woking Archery Club’s Eleanor Piper won bronze and a place on the podium, preventing a clean sweep by the Team GB recurve archers on the Saturday. Olympians Bryony Pitman and Penny Healey finished in first and second place respectively.

On the Sunday it was the turn of the UK’s top compound and barebow archers and Gibson shoot an astonishing 718, out of a maximum 720, to beat her own world record of 715 and match the current men’s world record.

“I wasn’t expecting it to happen,” said Gibson. “Absolutely not. Surrey is notoriously windy but we were blessed with perfect weather. The second to last end was probably my hardest. I was just trying to make sure it was good enough to give me some space on the last end. I finished with a five-X 60 points.”

The event took volunteers, the majority of which were from Woking Archery Club, weeks of preparation, culminating with set-up on the Friday and 13 hours of work on each competition day.

Helen Piper, event organiser alongside Woking Archery Club members Mark Piper, Candy Schofield and Mark Preston, said: “This event is the result of the generosity of a team of volunteers who gave their time and expertise to run one of the UK’s top domestic competitions. The feedback we received from competitors and judges alike is that they did an amazing job.”