Eric Peters of Canada during the Men's recurve finals during the 2023 Hyundai World Archery championships on Aug., 6 in Berlin. He placed silver in the championship, the best individual performance yet by a Canadian at the event.Supplied/Getty Images
As he grew up in Ottawa, Eric Peters showed no inclination toward team sports. Like other kids he skated on the Rideau Canal, but had no great interest in hockey.
“It’s really just something that never appealed to me,” Peters says.
He was bookish and immersed himself in reading fantasy novels – and that was where his interest in archery was born.
By the time he was 11, Peters had badgered his dad enough that he purchased Eric a child-sized bow and arrow and enrolled him in lessons.
Flash forward to today and Peters, 26, is one of Canada’s top archers. Earlier this month he won a silver medal at the world championships in Berlin in the recurve class, the best individual performance yet by a Canadian at the event.
Ranked 36th in a field of 167, Peters beat the world’s second-, ninth- and 14th-ranked players before he lost in the final to reigning Olympic champion Mete Gazoz of Turkey.
“Honestly I am still a little flabbergasted,” Peters says from Paris, where he is competing this week at the Archery World Cup. “It’s crazy to make the gold-medal match.
“It stings a bit to finish second but it’s still amazing. I was looking for a good result but not anything in particular when it comes to landing on the podium.”
In his early teens, Peters was chosen to be a member of Ontario’s junior team, and a few years later travelled to Nanching, China for the Youth Olympic Games. There, he won a bronze medal in a mixed-team event and finished 17th individually.
“I kept doing well but I wouldn’t say I ever felt like I was substantially better than anyone else,” Peters says.
His late father had a PhD in physics and his mother works as a physicist for the National Research Council of Canada so, of course, he is a bit of a brainiac himself.
Peters graduated recently from the University of Waterloo with a degree in chemistry. It took him seven years to complete his studies as he juggled academics and archery.
“I was not totally committed enough to be good at both,” he says.
At the end of 2018 he decided to go all-in on archery.
“I am smart but I am not that smart, and figured I am pretty good at this archery thing and could always go back to school,” Peters says. “I wasn’t at the prodigy level at the time. I shot a whole whack of arrows.”
In 2019 he had a breakout year. He rose in the rankings to No. 2 in Canada behind Crispin Duenas and won a bronze medal in the individual recurve and a gold in the team recurve in Lima, Peru at the Pan American Games.
He was gaining momentum but then the COVID-19 pandemic made training more challenging. His results fell off ahead of qualifying for the 2021 Olympic Games. He was edged out by Duenas and chosen as an alternate but did not go to Tokyo.
The world championships in Berlin are a qualifying event for the Olympics, so Peters’s silver-medal secured one berth for Canada at the 2024 Summer Games.
The country’s top archers battle it out for much of the next year to determine who gets that spot. Depending on results, Canada could end up with as many as three archers in Paris competing individually and in mixed-team classes.
The recurve bow used in the Olympics and at many other events employs advanced technologies and materials and boosts an arrow’s speed.
Peters entered this week’s World Cup ranked 15th in the men’s recurve. The final will be contested on Sunday and the leader is Brady Ellison of the United States.
The goal for Peters now is to reach the next Olympics.
“Coming into this year I was shooting better and feeling a bit better,” he says. “That’s important, but year over year the competition only gets better.”
He shoots anywhere from 200 to 400 arrows a day during practice, which takes a minimum of three hours. “In archery, as much as strength and fitness is involved, it is very much a skill sport,” Peters says. “That’s why the repetitions are so important.
“The mental part is the most difficult. You pull a bow back exactly the same way every time. You shoot one arrow at a time. It is a slow, deliberate sport, one where adrenalin is not your friend.
“If you don’t shoot your best shot, you have to let go of it. Once you let go of the arrow, it is out of your hands.”
When they are not competing, Peters says archers sit around and chew the fat.
“Mostly about archery,” he says.
He works at a bow shop part-time and met his fiancée at an archery range. They became engaged in December and plan to marry after the 2024 Olympics.
He didn’t shoot a love note to Lillian before he proposed.
“I was strictly instructed not to do it in public and ideally for it not to have anything to do with archery,” he says with a laugh. “The wedding will have no archery themes.”