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Slingshot is a small hand-held projectile launcher. Around the world it is known by many names, such as a catapult  in the UK and a peashooter in the US. It is composed of a Y-shaped frame with elastic rubber strips attached to the upper two ends. A projectile is loaded into the slingshot, and by pulling back on the rubber bands, their projectile is loaded to fire at a target.

The slingshot is mainly used as a weapon, or as a game played by youth, though there are also slingshot competitions. Slingshot is not a popular sport, but there are national competitions held in some countries, such as Spain, Italy and China. These countries are also the most successful at the Slingshot World Cup.

Like other target sports such as shooting, darts and archery, the participants stand a distance away from a target, and score points for accuracy hitting the target with a small metal ball.

The standard shooting distance from the target is 10 meters. There are different target types, and different events such as precision, precision distance, and speed events.

Using the falling target type, each shooter has five shots in 3 minutes, aiming at five target discs of different diameters, 10cm (2 points), 9 cm (4 points), 7 cm (6 points), 6 cm (8 points) and 4 cm (10 points).

With the concentric circle target type, each shooter has 5 minutes to complete 10 shots. The best 5 shots are counted. The inner red circle (diameter 4 cm) scores 9-10 points, the next circle yellow (8cm diameter) scores 7-8 points, the outer blue circle (12 cm diameter) scores 5-6 points.

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Similar Sports

• Knife Throwing — a knife is thrown towards a target.
• Axe Throwing — competitors throw axes at a circular target.
• Target Archery — archery competitions held indoors or outdoors between 18 m and  90 m from the target.
• Target Shooting — guns of any type used for aiming at a target.
• Darts — a throwing game in which small missiles are thrown at a target dartboard.
• Target Archery — a popular Archery competition where competitors shoot at stationary circular targets from different distances.

Related Pages

• Complete list of sports
• The Encyclopedia of Sports