Olympics 2008

Archery is one of the toughest Olympic sports you will come across.

If you don't believe me, hold your arm out in front of you, raise your thumb and focus on your nail.

That's about the size of the target that archers see when they line up for the Olympic competition.

Then consider firing 72 arrows, at 40-second intervals, at that 1.22m target some 70m, away, taking into account the wind, and that's just for starters.

It's not just a mental challenge, it's physical too.

A couple of months ago I went to meet British Olympic archery hopeful Alan Wills at a training session at Lord's cricket ground, the venue for the 2012 competition.

Alison Williamson, (pictured) who won individual bronze at 2004 Athens Games, was alongside Alan and is looking to reach her fifth consecutive Olympics this year.

It was my first taste of watching archery close up and it provided a compelling insight into the concentration required as arrow after arrow was fired, metronome-like, towards a target only around 45m away.

Alan kindly allowed me the opportunity to have a closer look at his bow and draw the bowstring back.

I thought I was doing quite well as my pulling arm began to quiver uncontrollably, until the British number one told me I had only drawn the bow back to about half of its capacity and if I were to fire an arrow it would fall embarrassingly short of 70m.

The 72-arrow section is just the ranking part of the competition as well. South Korea's Im Dong-hyun set a new world best for this stage of the competition in 2004, dropping just 33 points as he totalled an incredible 687 out of a possible 720.

To put this into perspective, it means he hit the bullseye, which is only 12.2cm across and worth 10 points, at least 39 times - however, it is not recognised as an Olympic record as this stage of the competition was held before the opening cermony!

To reach the final and win gold, the archers will have fired 162 arrows and over 50% of them will have had to hit the bullseye.

If you know of a more technically challenging Olympic sport, I'd love to hear from you.

Meanwhile, why not watch Great Britain's archers shooting fruit on YouTube?