GMIT Castlebar Archery Club to attempt entry into Guinness BoR

The GMIT Castlebar Archery Club world record attempt came up just a little short at 6.38am today (Friday 19 April) after 21 hours and 8 minutes. Adria Quinn, the only remaining shooter still with possibility of breaking the record, was forced to withdraw, having not missed one single shot.

Paddy Woods, who had an unfortunate lapse 30 minutes into the attempt, missing the target therefore ruling him out of the official attempt, stayed shooting to accompany Adria and was totally consistent for the next 20 hours 38 minutes and was still going strong at 6.38 this morning.

Michael Quinn put in a great day's shooting before his attempt was ended on a technicality late in the evening (Thursday 18 April), showing the stringent nature of the event and the scrutiny involved. He too stayed on the line for a portion of the night to lend his support to Adria.

Professional Archer Eamon Rodgers, who was in attendance in his capacity as expert individual witness and scrutineer, said " This was an incredible achievement and phenomenal performance from relative novices in the sport.... the last Irish attempt on this record was undertaken by a group of advance archers with years of experience and an incredibly strict training regime of up to 6 hours a day training, the Archers of GMIT Castlebar can be extremely proud of their achievement".

He predicted a bright future for all shooters within in the sport and has tipped Adria to make the Irish team in the not too distant future.

Special credit has to go to Thomas Breen, who was the driving force behind the attempt but who was cruelly forced to withdraw from the official shooting due to illness on the eve of the event. He battled through to orchestrate events on the day and was a great ambassador for the club and GMIT - giving demonstrations and explanations to the large number of spectators who came to event and supported Barretstown camp (final amount raised not yet calculated), while keeping everyone on their toes and in compliance with the Guinness Book of World Records' extremely strict guidelines

Thanks to the large group of volunteers, background team, Irish Red Cross, technicians Physio and Dominos Pizza, (who kept everyone fed), without whom it would not have been possible.

On behalf of GMIT once, we are very proud of all of the archers' efforts in what was a great event to have on campus and a marvelous achievement by all involved./p>