From Paris to Gwangju: Eric Peters reflects on a year away from competition

For much of 2025, one question lingered among archery fans: where was Eric Peters?

The Berlin 2023 Hyundai World Archery Championships silver medallist had been absent from every stage of the Hyundai Archery World Cup and other major international events, leaving Canada’s top-ranked recurve archer off the field.

Eyebrows were raised again in Madrid – the final stop of the 2025 international circuit – when Peters’ name was still missing from the entry list. His compatriots Brian Maxwell, Reece Wilson-Poyton, Brandon Xuereb and Greg Moore made up Canada’s recurve men’s contingent instead.

“Last year, I was a full-time archer and a part-time worker,” Peters explained. “Now it’s the opposite: I’m full-time in the workforce and a part-time archer. I’ve been keeping up with training as best I can, but I’m not as consistent.”

Before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – where he finished in the quarterfinals – Peters worked part-time at a bow shop in Ottawa while prioritising training. He now works full-time as a professional technician in the quality control lab of a pharmaceutical company.

That made Paris, and its iconic Les Invalides finals venue, the last time he appeared on a World Archery competition line – until his recent return at the Gwangju 2025 Hyundai World Archery Championships. He had kept sharp competing at local events like the Lancaster Classic but, for the most part, had swapped the maple leaf jersey and armguard for a white lab coat.

In Gwangju, despite his year-long absence from international competition, Peters shot a 680 in qualification to seed eighth and advanced to the quarterfinals, where he lost 1-7 to eventual runner-up Marcus D’Almeida.

Although steady competition is valuable for any archer, Peters said the reduced schedule had unexpected benefits.

“Because I got to train specifically for the world championships, knowing that was the only event I was going to, I could really build up towards it and be as prepared as possible,” he said. “When you’re competing from event to event, that’s much harder to do.”

“As well as you prepare, it’s a lot easier if you’re only targeting one [event].”

He admitted that Madrid – in July – was technically possible, but not realistic.

“By then, I’d been in the new job long enough that I could have taken vacation days, but due to business needs, it wasn’t going to happen,” he explained. “World championships almost didn’t happen due to some hiccups at work and things falling behind schedule.”

Now 28, Peters is also preparing for another major milestone – his wedding in November. His fiancée, a former junior coach for Canada, and Peters plan to start a family, which he acknowledges will further shape his archery schedule.

He’s already ruled out the upcoming Indoor Archery World Series season due to work commitments and wedding plans.

The Canadian high-performance system adds another layer of challenge.

Canada’s para coach Linda Price is currently doing “double duty,” as Peters puts it, temporarily coaching both able-bodied and para archers while Archery Canada searches for a full-time replacement for Shawn Riggs. Ron Van Der Hoff, who had been serving in an interim capacity, left earlier this year to join Great Britain.

This has made centralising the national setup extremely difficult for Peters and the rest of the Canadian team, who are spread across the enormous country. They even entered the world championships without a national training camp.

Add in the uncertainty around athlete funding – Canada’s women’s rugby team recently relied on crowdfunding to compete at the World Cup Final – and it’s no wonder that Peters’ future appearances are unclear.

“I can be optimistic, but it’s hard to say what’s going to happen,” he said. “I hold out some hope because it would be nice to be out there again next year and in future years, to go and represent Canada and do all this.”

“But if the situation outside of sport isn’t improving  and moving outside of sport, there’ll be more limitations on my availability.”

The past year has also made him question what it means to “do enough.”

“One of my biggest concerns going into the world championships was: did I do enough? Am I doing enough to justify being here and everything around it?”

“Well, it did, for the most part, turn out to be the case. But it’s something I’m still grappling with – what is enough, and what do I need to do?”

Peters is far from alone in balancing career, family and elite sport, but his comeback in Gwangju showed that the long break hasn’t diminished his potential.

Despite the layoff, he still has plenty to offer, and it will give him the confidence that he can competitively dip in and out of major tournaments.

At 28, in his physical prime, Peters continues to enjoy the sport.

We may not see him on the Canada team for another 12 or so months as he begins to settle down, but when he does return, expect him to shine once more.

Unlike many, a break from competition hasn’t dulled his potential.