Over ten days in October 2026, Australian para compound archer Jonathon Milne broke four para world records, and all four have now been ratified. The scores are recorded by World Archery, and I read the details with more attention than I usually give to results from abroad. I run an archery pro shop and club in Shenzhen, and for about twenty years I have built arrows, tuned bows and coached students who want to shoot better than they did last season. I have never met Milne, I have never shot at Sydney Olympic Park, and I know nothing about his training beyond what he has said publicly. What I can do is look at the scores and the rules behind them, because they say a lot about how this sport is put together.
The opening record came on 11 October at the 78th ANSW State Target Championships in Sydney. He shot 1402 for the 1440 round, beating the mark he had set himself in 2019. No para archer had gone over 1400 before that score.
For anyone who has not shot one, the 1440 round is 36 arrows at each of four distances, 90, 70, 50 and 30 metres for men. That makes 144 arrows in total and a maximum score of 1440. World records for the individual distances must be shot inside a full 1440 round. That rule is a big part of why those distance marks sit for so long. Milne's 70 metre score of 355 broke a record set in 2005 by Alberto Simonelli. His 50 metre score of 354 and 30 metre score of 360 came on 24 October at the Australian national championships in Hobart, Tasmania, and both beat marks set in 2007. He also holds the 90 metre record with 344, set in 2023, and that one was not part of this run.
What we shoot in international competition now is mostly a 72 arrow ranking round into match play, and the 1440 round, which everyone here still calls a FITA, shows up mostly at state and national championships. Milne put it plainly when he said he probably should have broken the record a long time ago, and I hear some frustration in that line, which I understand.
He has been open about the work behind the scores. "I've made a few little form changes and tweaked a few little things on the bow," he said. He trains at Sydney Olympic Park, the venue used for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, and he described its nickname, "The Wind Farm," as earned because "it's always windy." Anyone who has released a long shot in gusts knows what that does to a rhythm that was perfect on the practice line. A windy range punishes the archer who gets distracted and rewards the one who keeps the process the same from arrow one to arrow 144.
His frustration with the calendar is really about access. He described good conditions at 90 metres that turned against him by 50, and then a day that became a write-off. Australia gives him two realistic chances a year to shoot the full round, at the state championships and the nationals, and the weather at either can change quickly. When chances are that few, records do not get challenged often enough to stay honest.
The rule that a distance record must sit inside a full round makes sense to me. The full round is the complete test. If you pull one distance out and shoot it alone, you choose your weather, you choose your day and you choose your own conditions, and the record stops being comparable to the others. I have no problem with the rule. Four distances, 36 arrows each, and no exit in the middle. The problem is the calendar, not the rule. You can see it in the marks Milne broke. The 50 and the 30 were standing since 2007, and that is not because nobody could shoot them. My read is that almost nobody got a full round in good conditions often enough to try.
Look at 1402 for a moment. Over 144 arrows, that averages above 9.7 an arrow, and it means he dropped only 38 points from the perfect 1440 across the whole round. Nobody builds a score like that on one good morning. What it tells me is that the basics held across four distances in a row, and that is a training outcome rather than a lucky one. Habits get built on the practice line, long before a record is on the table.
This is why I do push the people I coach to shoot full rounds now and then, even when it is inconvenient. Over 72 arrows you can hold it together on form alone. Over 144 you cannot, and the middle of that round will expose you. Your grip starts to drift, your focus slips in the second distance, and your stamina runs thin in the third. That exposure is how you find out what is actually wrong, and a ranking round does not give you that picture. Wind, stamina and attention all get tested at once. I would rather a student discover a weakness on a Saturday morning than in a match that counts.
Milne is targeting LA28. If Australia secures compound quota places, he is in contention to represent the country. He also competes against able-bodied archers on the international circuit. I see no reason to treat his scores as a special case. It is a shooter putting scores up at a windy range and asking for the test to be as complete as it should be.
He has also said something I wish more archers would say. "It makes me want to improve on them, because I know I left points out there." A record is a snapshot of what someone could do on one day with one set of conditions, and the honest response is to look for the points you left behind. He framed the goal the same way when he said, "I just want to keep improving on myself."
I have not gone through the classification rules for his sport class in detail, so I am not going to comment on how those records get grouped. That is a question for people who work inside that system every day. My view is simpler. Do not change the 1440 rule, because the full round is the complete test and it should stay that way. Run more full rounds, and get more people willing to shoot them in ordinary weather and bad weather alike. If more archers do that, the records will move on their own without anyone having to rewrite the rules.