Whenever an athlete heads out to represent their country at a major international competition, winning a medal is always top of their list of achievements.

For Bernard Wade, picking up two medals at the Island Games brought with it a lot of joy. The 39-year-old won two medals in archery, first winning silver in the 1440 men's recurve and following up with a bronze in the head-to-head knockout.

Speaking after claiming his second medal, Wade shared how much that meant, as it allowed him to relax after he was forced to keep his emotions in check over the two days of competition.

“It feels great to accomplish my goal of winning two medals for this year's Island Games,’’ he said.

“It makes all the time spent training and preparing for the games worthwhile. For today's bronze medal, when Jason and I scored the shots, I got ecstatic that I had won and was finally able to relax as I had been emotionally controlling myself as much as I could.

“For the silver medal, I really didn't know I had won until after we had finished. Although we could check our placing after each round, I decided to just focus on my own score and was told later that I was doing well. As with the bronze I was ecstatic, but I needed to keep calm as there were two more days of competition.”

The bowman put down his success to the ample time he spent perfecting his craft with his mentors and feels the weather may have prevented home from winning gold in his two competitions.

“My extensive training plan over the past four months as well as regular scoring helped me with preparing and having the confidence to win these medals,’’ he said.

“With the help of my coaches Ross Roberts, Trina Roberts and Paul Harshaw I was able to maintain a strong mental game for this competition, where I wasn't overthinking things and kept to the basics. My biggest factor in not reaching the gold medal was the weather. Although I have trained in rough weather, it's still a very difficult environment to compete in. It affects you both physically and emotionally and we had three days of unstable weather.”

Wade, a receptionist at Mitis Dental Services, has won a medal before at the Island Games, picking up a silver at the 2017 event in Gotland, but has only been actively competing in the sport for the past decade.

“I started archery in 2013, so I have been doing it for 10 years now,’’ said Wade.

“I did my first competition in 2015 at the Lancaster Classic, an indoor competition in Pennsylvania. My next competition was that same year and was my first Island Games in Jersey. After that I've been hooked and been on at least one trip a year to competitions.”