A schoolboy from Oxfordshire has broken a British archery record a year after he first picked up a bow, and hopes one day to compete at the Olympic games.

Archery champion Yannis Drew, 14, from Hailey, near Witney

With Alison Williamson becoming the first woman archer from Great Britain to win an Olympic medal since 1908 this week, and local clubs reporting a rise in members with The Lord of the Rings films generating new interest in the sport, archery looks to have been given a new lease of life.

Yannis Drew, 14, of Delly Hill, Hailey, near Witney, set the record for the under-35 pound junior recurve bow at a flight shooting competition on August 15.

The object of flight shooting is to fire an arrow as far as possible, and Yannis has already taken the titles of West Midlands Flight Champion and County Champion for target shooting.

Yannis, a pupil at Bartholomew School in Eynsham, said: "You have to tune the arrows and tune the bow right, and then you have to try to get the optimum angle to shoot. It takes quite a lot of strength to do it."

He first tried the sport a year ago, when he saw archers practising in Witney. He said: "I got an old bow at Cokethorpe School, went up and had a go and it went on from there. No one else does it at school, but I've been allowed to practice in the school hall. I'd like to be good enough to go to the 2008 Olympics."

Yannis practices with the Windrush Bowmen at Witney Rugby Club. His teacher and club chairman Barry Groves, who holds 20 British records and five world records himself, was with Yannis when he set the record.

"He certainly has potential," he said. "When I started teaching him as a beginner last year he was hitting the gold, the centre of the target, with a cheap plastic bow, so he obviously had talent. If he puts his mind to it we could see him in the Olympics in 2012."

Mr Groves said the club's fortunes had revived in recent years. "We were going downhill, the Windrush Bowmen was a very small club a couple of years ago but over the last two or three years we've had a lot of interest," he added.

The sport has seen a 10 per cent increase in new members over the last year after a stagnant decade. Martin Saunders, of archery magazine Bow International, said some of this could be put down to the 'Legolas effect'.

"We've always had archery embedded in our culture in this country through Robin Hood.

"Now The Lord of the Rings has appeared, young people are relating to it through that," he said.

Details of local archery clubs can be found by phoning the sport's national governing body on 01952 677888.