Late last year, the Mounted Archery Association of America announced something amazing: for the first time ever, the USA was a candidate to host the world mounted archery championships! Any facility could enter as long as they met the criteria which included being able to host almost 100 competitors from around the world and source 50 horsed trained for mounted archery.

Since I have not won the lottery and bought my dream 400-acre ranch to build the premiere mounted archery training facility in the world, it wasn’t coming to Texas. But I was thrilled to learn the winning bid was from Tennessee!

This is a huge deal because there have only been 3 IHAA World Championships. They started in 2018 in Hungary, skipped 2020 for some reason (ha), and then were in Mongolia in 2023. It will be quite some time before the US is eligible again.

So off C. and I flew to Lewisburg, TN, by way of Nashville, to the beautiful Rising Glory Farm, home of Team USA member Elizabeth Gonzalez Tinnan.

I don’t even know where to start describing how awesome this event was, so forgive me if it comes out disjointed!

First, the courses – an official mounted archery competition has 3 courses:

The Raid 2-3-5:

This is an event where speed rules. You have 6 runs down a 90 meter track. For the first two runs, you shoot at two targets. For the second two runs, you shoot at 3 targets. For the last two runs, you shoot at 5 targets. You have 14 seconds in which to do this.

This was the first event we watched. The thing that struck me was how relaxed the horses were!

I feel like normally, when you see horses that participate in speed events, before competition they are amped. There was none of that here on any of the horses – no fear, no anxiety. They could have been strolling through the pasture on their way to get some hay.

Speed on this track is a strategy – you get points for shooting the targets (1-5 depending on where; a bullseye is 5 points) but you also get a time bonus. However, it’s much harder to shoot accurately the faster you go.

Here’s a training run from Siem Budding, from the Netherlands – he was one of the fastest riders (and is the newly crowned world champion!)

Here’s a picture in case that video doesn’t work, just trust me he was fast:

Here’s team France on the Raid course. Slower run, but still got a time bonus.

And shoutout to the company I work for that very kindly sponsored a target:

The Tower 110:

This consists of 3 targets arranged in a front shot, side shot, and back shot (also called a Partheon shot) on a 110 meter track (there are 90m and 60m variations as well.) You can shoot each target as many times as you want, so the name of the game is a slower pace to get off more shots (but you still have 22 seconds to compete it.)

Here’s Heather Lomax, of Team USA, doing the Tower on her horse Moose:

Crowd favorites Rodney Deamon of Australia riding Banjo who absolutely went faster when the crowd cheered his name ❤

The Hunt Course:

This is like combining cross country with mounted archery. Here is the map of the course so you get a feel for it:

There was a small jump, and mounted archery has just started adding in equitation elements – a section where you had to slow down to a walk, rather than just canter the whole way. The rules state jumps must be optional and you cannot penalize anyone for not taking it, but you can offer a bonus.

Overall Impressions:

Getting to see all of these amazing competitors was incredible:

Over 60 competitors from 19 different countries!

The best thing about all of it was by far the horses.

Oh, did I say horses? I meant all the equines:

Almost oll of them had bitless bridles. Hardly anyone used spurs. A few more on day 2 than day 1, but they were still the overwhelming minority.

Obviously you can’t carry a whip….but using your archery equipment to whip your horse is illegal.

All of the horses looked HAPPY. Like they truly enjoyed the event. Every competitor praised and petted their horses. Lots of “good boys.” And these horses didn’t belong to the competitors (except for Team USA of course)

A few horses came up lame and were immediately removed from competition, including Heather Lomax’s horse Moose. It wasn’t even a question. It was just done.

The competitors were all full of praise for their horses – many of them made posts on social media talking about how awesome their individual horses were. And that’s no easy feat considering they only met their horses that week – they spend 2-3 days before the competition doing trial rides. Then they get to choose the horse they will compete on, but I imagine it’s nothing like having your own horse there.

The competitors supported each other as well – I saw at least 3 team members there with injuries that kept them from riding, but they still came to support their team. One person had a bad fall in the warmup ring on day 2 and injured his shoulder – so someone let him borrow a youth bow he just happened to have with him so he could still compete.

In terms of skill….these were hands down the best mounted archers in the world. I can only dream of being this good one day. And yet….they missed. They fumbled and dropped arrows. 3 people fell. One of my favorite riders fell early in the hunt course, so they let him re-run the first half of it. Another rider had his saddle twist at the very end of the course and came off. He got up, led his horse out, and stood there gently scratching his face & telling him he was a good boy. It sounds silly to be so excited for that, but I never see that at our local dressage shows. I can’t honestly think of a single thing I saw that made me cringe.

Mounted archery is a growing sport, but right now it’s small enough that everything is wonderful and supportive. I heard several people say they wish it would be in the olympics; I used to feel the same way but I know as soon as that happens we’re going to lose some of what makes this support so wonderful for both horses and riders, and I jealously want to guard it as long as I can.

Back at home, C. and I couldn’t wait to practice: