As Olympic archers compete in Paris, many of them are using spotting scopes made in Wyoming.
Archey teams from the USA, France and Great Britan are using spotting scopes made by the Lander-based Maven optics company.
“We love to see Wyoming represented on the world stage,” Maven co-owner Cade Maestas told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
“We’ve been a big supporter of archery from the beginning of our company,” said Maestas, who helped found Maven in 2013.
An Olympic Legacy
This isn’t Maven’s first trip to the Olympics.
The company was named the official optics provider for Archery Team USA during the 2021 games in Tokyo. Those Olympics were originally scheduled for 2020, but were delayed a year because of the COVID pandemic.
Since then, the French and British teams have decided to go with Maven as well, and Maestas credits the company’s “very high quality” for that.
Maven was also proactive in bringing more Olympic archery teams onboard, he added.
“I met with Team France at a competition last year. We actually went over to Paris for the Archery World Cup finals,” he said.
Maven scopes helped the French team win a silver medal at this year Olympic Games on their home turf, he added.
Picking Out The Smallest Details
Laypeople might not think that high-powered optics are necessary for archery competitions.
But Maestas said having the best available spotting scopes is vital for the Olympic archery coaches who use them and the elite level of competition.
Winning or losing often comes down to the tiniest differences in shot placement on the targets, he said.
Coaches need to give archers real-time feedback regarding where their arrows are hitting, and what adjustments to make to win medals.
“They’re shooting at 60-70 meters (out to roughly 76 yards),” Maestas said. “You just cannot see that detail with the naked eye at those distances.”
For perspective, most bowhunters like to get to a least within about 40 yards of big game animals before attempting shots. So, about half the distance that Olympic archers must shoot.
Maestas said Maven hopes to keep building on the Wyoming connection to the Olympics and other world-class competitive archery.
“Excellent optics are a very important tool in that discipline,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
