The Independant: The winning formula: Scientists and the Olympics

Hoyt Helix 900CX archery bow

As part of its Olympic build-up, the BBC asked British archers to fire arrows at fruit dangling on strings. The watermelon and apple were easy. Then the archers faced a bigger – or smaller – challenge: a single grape. But the tiny fruit barely twitched as Charlotte Burgess sent an arrow straight through it, using a Hoyt.

Bows by the American firm have accounted for more than 75 per cent of all Olympic archery medals since 1972. Key to their success are the “limbs” or blades, made of the same flexible yet crush-proof “syntactic foam” used by the US Navy inside the dive planes or “wings” of some of its nuclear submarines.

Before Beijing, the British team travelled to a lab in Germany to record their shots using high-speed cameras. The team reviewed their shots in ultra-slow motion and made minute adjustments to ensure that nothing brushes their arrows when they are released from the bow at 150mph.