Why is Olympic Archery 1-on-1 rather than all-at-once?

Question

Background:

In 100 Meter Dash or Canoeing, there is no space to let all Participants run at once, hence there are numerous qualification rounds where 10 (or a little more) Participants run and try to get selected for the final round. This final round is not 1-on-1, rather it is all-at-once with all qualifying Participants. This makes sense, because each Participant has to run as fast as possible without competitive strategies or competitive tactics.
[[ If 100 Meter Dash were 1-on-1, it would take ages to complete ! ]]

Here, I have used and highlighted competitive, for lack of a better word; I am using it to mean that there are no reactionary or defensive actions in Racing.

In Boxing or Wrestling, it is 1-on-1 where each Pair has one winner who moves to the next round. This makes sense because the Participants fight with competitive strategies or competitive tactics. The final match is against the 2 Best Participants.
[[ If Boxing were all-at-once, the results would be random ! ]]

Here too, I have used and highlighted competitive, in the same sense; I am using it to mean that there are reactionary & defensive actions in Boxing & Wrestling.

In Olympic Shooting, according to the Schedule , there was one all-at-once qualification round with 50 Participants where 8 qualified for the all-at-once finals.
While Shooting is similar to Archery with some other weapon, there was no 1-on-1 format. There was some rationale to select all-at-once rather than 1-on-1 here.

Question:
In Archery, the participants have to hit the target to get Highest Points, without competitive strategies or competitive tactics. It is similar to 100 Meter Dash and not similar to Boxing. The Archery results would be the same if it were all-at-once (with qualification rounds, if required) and it would be completed faster. [[ faster in terms of total number of rounds & number of rounds to reach the finals ]]
In the Schedule [[ https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/archery/olympic-schedule-and-results.htm ]] we see that Archery is 1-on-1, taking too much time or rather too many rounds. Why is that ?
Here is an alternative : Why not let 8 teams Participate all-at-once in 2 qualification rounds ? The top 4+4 can move to the finals. In this way, there is the Possibility of having more teams Participate at the Olympics.
While Archery is similar to Shooting with some other weapon, there was no all-at-once format. I am looking for the rationale to select 1-on-1 rather than all-at-once here.

Answer 1

In Archery, the participants have to hit the target to get Highest Points, without competitive strategies or competitive tactics.

This is only true of the first round. In the first round, the archers shoot a set number of arrows (72) and are scored by where they hit the target (0-10). But no one is eliminated after the first round. After the first round, the archers compete one-on-one by shooting to see who can win three sets first. Sets in this context are like rounds within one match. Ties count as half. There might not be defense there, but there is competition.

One issue is that breaking up into sets encourages the archers to try their best in each set. Because it is winning three sets that matters. Someone can lose the first two sets by a lot, tie the third, and win the next three sets by one shot each and win the match. If it was simply the total score that mattered, archers who weren't doing well wouldn't have much reason to try in later shots. The sport would be less competitive.

Another issue is that those who make the rules feel that the stress of competition makes shooting more difficult. Example reference:

Shooting in a specific amount of time can be challenging for archers as they have to battle their nerves and stress from competition. The natural fear of competition can trigger the fight or flight response which makes it more challenging for archers to get a good shot.

Whether or not they are correct is another matter. But that's why they chose the format. Because they feel that it makes it harder.

Looking at the Men's Individual Olympic results, this changed who won. None of the top three after the first (ranking) round advanced to the semi-finals, so they didn't medal. The second and fourth scorers from the first round made it to the quarterfinals, but neither the first nor third did. The eventual winner defeated the second ranked archer in the quarterfinals and had been ranked tenth after the first round.

Under your system, all three of the medalists would have lost. Three different people would have won. So it wouldn't just have been faster. It would have produced different results.

If we switch to look at the Men's Team results, they finished the whole thing in one day.

I don't think that time was a significant limitation for them. If it was, they could have simply added more ranges. As it was, they finished all five competitions in only eight days (24th to 31st in July; out of seventeen for the Olympics). None of the three team competitions took more than a single day. They had time to support more competitors, at least twice what they actually had. Beyond that, they could have added more ranges. Just putting the men and women on separate ranges would have given them an extra day. Putting different brackets of the men's individual on separate ranges would have allowed them to pick up more.

Answer 2

The answer, as with why they organize any sport in any fashion, is excitement, and history.

Archery was removed from the Olympic Games for several decades, due to lack of consistency in the rules¹. In the 1930s, several countries joined together to create the first governing body of competitive Archery - then called FITA, now the World Archery Federation. Archery did not return to the olympics until 1972 (Munich).

They changed the format in 1992 to the "Olympic Round", which was introduced in 1992 to make the sport more watchable:

For Olympic medal competitions in archery, the Archery Olympic Round is currently used. This was introduced to make the sport more watchable as a competitive event, and was developed by World Archery.

As to why they didn't do that with shooting - apparently they didn't think they needed to. More importantly, though, shooting has been part of nearly every olympics since 1896, only missing two, 1904 and 1928, and has had a world federation for nearly the entire time (since 1907).