SAI cancels archery World Cup participation after ticket mix-up

Vinayak Padmadeo
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 20

There will be no Indian participation at the Archery World Cup in Medellin, Colombia. Indian participation has been officially cancelled by the Sports Authority of India (SAI).

The Archery Association of India (AAI) broke the news of the non-participation to the heartbroken archers through a text message. The archers were eagerly looking to test their skills leading up to the all-important World Championships, which is a qualifying tournament for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A few of the archers vented their anger, pointing fingers at the federation for showing carelessness about their travel arrangements.

The participation has been cancelled due to a mix-up in air tickets. The team for the April 22-28 event was to leave in two batches. The first batch, consisting seven players and staff, including Tarundeep Rai, Atul Verma and former India coach and AAI vice president Purnima Mahato, was to take a flight to Amsterdam before taking a connecting flight from there to Bogota.

The scheduled 3:30am flight early today (Saturday) to Amsterdam was delayed, and as a result the Indian team was almost definitely going to miss the connecting flight to Bogota. The airline, KLM, then wanted to accommodate the players and coaches in different flights from Amsterdam. The players and coaches did not accept this as this would have meant leaving a couple of newcomers to travel on their own from Amsterdam. The new plans would have meant that they would have had to book new tickets to travel from Bogota to Medellin.

“We had no option but to return. We couldn’t take a risk to let a newcomer travel all alone,” said a member of the team that returned from the airport today.

SAI had to cancel participation after failing to get fresh tickets that would have ensured the team’s participation at the official practice in Medellin on April 22. While some archers were trying to book flights on their own, AAI sent out a text message announcing the cancellation of the tour. 

Some of the archers have called the role of AAI in question for this mess. “I don’t want to enter into a blame game but I have one question for everyone involved. Why the tickets were booked this late when we had finished up the selection trials a couple of months back? Common sense would mean you will buy tickets for that sector when they are cheap (Rs 80,000-90,000) and not book them when they will cost you Rs 2.5 or 3 lakh!” an archer said.

‘Did our best’

By norm the teams reach the venue at least three-four days in advance to get acclimatised. But AAI, curiously, organised the National Ranking Archery Tournament (NRAT) in Chandigarh on April 16-19, which also played a part in the delay in booking the tickets.

SAI director general Neelam Kapur said that the organisation did everything to help the archers. “Due to holiday rush on airlines and cancellation of certain flights we couldn’t get appropriate bookings despite our best efforts. Therefore we had no choice but to cancel this participation,” Kapur told The Tribune.

AAI president BVP Rao was unavailable for comment while secretary general Maha Singh said he was unaware about the real reason behind the cancellation.

Players in quandary

A few senior members of the squad will be affected badly because of AAI’s new selection policy. After the selection trials, the new dispensation had segregated the senior squad into two teams – A and B. Of the four World Cups, A team members were to participate in two, B team members were to participate in one, while a mixed team of both teams plus junior teams were to take part in the fourth.

But now that the first World Cup has been thrown out of the equation, the seniors are feeling the heat as it could impact their rankings, which could eventually cost them a place in the year-ending World Games where only the top-seven ranked archers participate.

“Most of us are going to suffer due to this mess. How would I get in the top rankings when my participation is getting hampered by this policy?” said a senior archer. “This is a big disadvantage for some of us.”