Compound archers face anxious times over Asiad inclusion

Vinayak Padmadeo

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 23

The Indian compound archers are a nervous lot these days. They are awaiting news from Dhaka where the Asian archery body (WAA) has assembled on the sidelines of the Asian Archery Championship to take a crucial decision.

The agenda is to decide how many medals will be allotted to the compound discipline. The organisers of the 2018 Asian Games, to be held in Jakarta and Palembang, had dropped the compound competition from its Games programme.

After protest from all the major Asian countries, including India, and active intervention from World Archery, the organisers allocated three competitions in the discipline. However, no decision has been forwarded officially by the organisers till yet. Only the recurve competitions have been marked to be held till yet.

For the record, at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, all four of India’s medals, including the men’s team gold, came in the compound competition.

Archery Association of India (AAI) said that it has been assured by World Archery that compound will be reinstated.

“After several countries protested, the team and individual events were included. This is according to our correspondence with the World Archery officials. Now we are told that there can only be three events in compound. We will wait for the Asian body to decide,” AAI official Virender Sachdeva told The Tribune.

Abhishek Verma, who won the team gold and the individual silver in Incheon, said it was wrong to dock the compound event of medals. “Already we don’t get to shoot at the Olympics. If the same happens at the Asian Games, then what will the compound archers do?” he said.

“We were told that both the team and individual competitions in both the men’s and women’s categories will be held. Now we are hearing that World Archery has been insisting on having a mixed team event. So this means either the individual or the team event might be dropped. Whatever they decide in Dhaka, compound archery is losing out, which is very sad,” he added.