POYNTON hotshot Graeme Peatfield had to put his craft and design skills to use when captaining the Great Britain Target Crossbow team.
Peatfield, head of Craft and Design at Poynton High School, led the British squad in the World Championships in New Jersey.
After a week’s intensive shooting in extremely high temperatures there was a nail biting finish in the race for medals.
Typically, team positions can be split by up to 100 points but the American and Great Britain teams were tied on overall points and the number of hits, Great Britain taking the win on the number of dead centres shot.
Peatfield was shooting his self-constructed own design of trackless crossbow after it had received major structural damage during the trans-Atlantic flight.
A quick DIY rebuild of components in America using part of a disused rowing machine and some metal oddments got the crossbow up and running just in time for the equipment inspection.
The World Champion Great Britain Team comprised of Iris Bingham from Rugby, Christopher Wall from Nottingham, and Peatfield.
The talented trio broke three official team World Records for accumulative distance scores.
The vast majority of competitors were full time crossbow shots and heavily sponsored; Team GB are amateur and mainly self-funded.
They have now started training for the next World Championships, to be held in Portugal 2009.
