HORSEBACK ARCHERY, MOUNTED ARCHERY IN MEXICO FIRST INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF MEXICO SWEDEN 2020.

Hello! I am Roberto Gonzalez, traveler, competitor, coach and researcher of the Sport of Archery in all its disciplines (not hunting as it is not a sport).

My sporting career within Archery includes the competitive practice of all types of bows and traditions (the 4 main disciplines), which is not very common since in general archers choose a shooting style and stick to it all. In life, they sometimes get to know and try 1 or 2 precision static styles (for example recurve, 3D or barebow) but even this is not very common, much less to change from a static style to a dynamic one, or from a western tradition to an oriental etc.

As the founder of the "Horseback Archery Mexico" archery school, in this blog I will tell my story of how I got to know and started this sport, being at that time a completely unknown tradition and sport in my country.

Year 2020 of my sports career

After living in Denmark for a while, I moved to Sweden. Once in Sweden I kept practicing archery on horseback long enough to be able to compete in my first "Postal match", a competition in which competitors send their scores to the International Federation for ranking from different places around the world. The rules are that they must take place on a track with official distances and annotation method and under the regulations, in this case, of the International Horseback Archery Alliance (IHAA), being the first Mexican registered in the international ranking of that international federation.

Since Archery on horseback has an enormous world historical tradition (named Intangible World Heritage by UNESCO) and is currently also practiced as a modern sport, there are two categories to compete: the modern uniform (riding clothing, boots and a t-shirt polo type) and historical costume (depending on the historical tradition of each participating country).

So, I chose the second option - I designed and had my Mexican suit taylor-made with the most recognized tailor of this type of suit in Mexico City. The costume is a copy of those used by the "Chinaco" warriors of Mexico in the s. XIX.