George Alavekiu built a final series of at least 90 foot bow limb sets in his race to exceed Harry Drake’s foot bow and
crossbow record accomplishments. In addition, there are numerous
prototype pairs and 1-piece configurations.
There are numerous surviving limb sets of the "1-mile" design, plus a couple dozen prototypes and test limbs. Of these, 60 pairs are in good enough condition to be shot today. In fact, a majority of these look as if they just came off the form this year. Why were so few ever used? I find only about twenty of the total show evidence of being heavily shot. About half of these are damaged beyond repair. It leads me to wonder if George continued to build these after 1970 when Harry Drake officially achieved the mile distance?
There are numerous surviving limb sets of the "1-mile" design, plus a couple dozen prototypes and test limbs. Of these, 60 pairs are in good enough condition to be shot today. In fact, a majority of these look as if they just came off the form this year. Why were so few ever used? I find only about twenty of the total show evidence of being heavily shot. About half of these are damaged beyond repair. It leads me to wonder if George continued to build these after 1970 when Harry Drake officially achieved the mile distance?
I gave a quick look through the arrows
George had built. There are at least 200 complete arrows plus several
in various stages of completion (I'll go into more detail on these in a later post). Some of the arrows have George’s name,
arrow number, and date on them in the customary format used at our US
National Competition. Some of these were dated September of 1989.
This was nearly 20 years after Harry Drake established his unlimited
foot bow record. Did George compete again? Or, was he planning to?
I was told that he continued to shoot on his own. What else might he
have achieved? Maybe some of these bow limbs are not as old as I had
originally thought? It is a bit of a mystery.
Anyone out there able to fill in the details?
