Ever wondered who’s behind Regional and National Flight Championships in Northern Counties? Let’s meet Flight Officer and all-round legend Tony Bakes…..
“I hated sport at school. No good at football, rugby was torture, but about 2 weeks before I finally left in 1976 I saw a group of pupils having archery lessons and asked if I could join in. I had found the sport for me. The teacher was a member of a local club whose secretary ran the county, regional and national flight archery competitions, and I spent many a year walking the range with him helping to set up the various flight shoots. I eventually took over the organisation of the Northern Counties and Nationals Flight in 1998 when the then organiser gave up, and help lay out the range at the Cumbrian and Cheshire flight shoots, and I am still going strong.
In 1998, I was tasked by World Archery to help write the World Flight Rules (along with fellow Brit Barry Groves and Ike Hancock of the USA), and developed the ‘Raptor’ scheme for flight classifications covering all World Archery recognised bow types to give all archers, regardless of age or gender the chance to obtain classification for distance, to run alongside the Archery GB classifications.
Achievements – I was the very first UK archer to shoot a target recurve bow and normal target arrow over 400m to set my first national record, before records were recognised by World Archery, and have held world flight records for Target Recurve, English Longbow and Target Compound.
2026 saw the first international flight championships held in Hungary, and I was invited as 1 of the top flight archers in the world to attend – 3 tournaments in three cities around Budapest. I shot 5 individual classes over the event, taking 5 x 1st places and was awarded the Hall of Fame medal.
Not bad for a guy who hated school sports.”
Not bad at all Tony, huge Congrats and thanks for championing Flight in our Region (and beyond)
