Sport: Bearding the Turk

Dew still drenched the alfalfa just off the east-west runway at Lancaster (Pa.) Municipal Airport at 5:30 one morning last week when the rangy truck driver from Porterville, Calif, set to work. Wearing only a pair of white toreador pants and a pair of suede chukka boots, Dan Lamore, 31, was gaudy enough. But his bow was the real eye stopper: a 54-in. monster made of fiber glass and maple, which required a force of 250 Ibs. to be shot at full power.

Spreading a blanket in the alfalfa, Lamore lay on his back, braced his boots in stirrups on the shaft, pulled back the string with both hands and sent a 25-in. fir-and-pine arrow whiffling into the sun. When bug-eyed officials at the 75th annual tournament of the National Archery Association finally found Lamore’s arrow 937.13 yds. away, they discovered that he had broken the old N.A.A. record for distance flight by nearly 50 yds. But Lamore, one of 1,000,000 toxophilites in the booming sport of archery, was just warming up. Half an hour later, using a 130-lb. hand bow, he fired an arrow 850.67 yds. to break the N.A.A. mark by 30 yds.

“The greatest bit of distance shooting in modern times,” marveled N.A.A. President Clayton B. Shenk. “Nothing to my knowledge has approached it since the 16th century, when the Turks were claiming distances approaching 1,000 yds.”