New Delhi [India], July 21 (ANI): Former Olympian and the High Performance Director of the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) National Centre of Excellence, Sanjeeva Singh, said India’s quest for an archery medal at the Summer Games should end at Paris 2024.
The archery competition at the Paris Olympics begins on July 25 and will continue until August 4. India will start in all five categories – men’s individual recurve, women’s individual recurve, men’s and women’s teams, and mixed teams.
Six Indian archers–Dhiraj Bommadevara, Pravin Jadhav, Tarundeep Rai, Deepika Kumari, Bhajan Kaur and Ankita Bhakat–have won quota places for Paris 2024.
After a training and acclimatisation stint at Compiegne in France, the archers were among the first to enter the Paris Olympics Games Village.
Sanjeeva Singh, who participated in the individual and team events at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, feels India can win “at least three medals” given all the preparation the squad has undergone leading up to the Games.
The sports ministry has spent Rs 39.18 crore on archery in the Paris Olympics cycle (2021-2024). A total of 41 national camps and 24 foreign exposure trips were supported by the Indian government through its Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS).
“Compared to Tokyo, the preparation has been better planned, with a lot of stress on scientific training, mental conditioning and, more importantly, tweaking the nature of domestic tournaments in line with the Olympic format,” Singh was quoted in a release from SAI as saying.
“If we go by current form and the way the archers are performing, we can realistically look at three medals – men’s individual, men’s team and mixed team. Out of these three, one will definitely happen. A medal from the women’s competition will be a bonus but the team has to click together,” she added.
Indian men have had some great results this year. In April, the trio of Rai, Jadhav and Bommadevara won a historic World Cup gold in Shanghai by beating the reigning Olympic champions, South Korea. The gold, which came after 14 years, was testimony to India’s rising confidence ahead of the final Olympic qualifier in June in Antalya, Turkey.
Singh stressed that Bommadevara is a medal prospect in men’s individual and if veteran Rai, who will be playing his fourth Olympics in Paris, doesn’t succumb to time pressure, the chances of a medal will go up in the team’s. Both the men’s and women’s teams qualified for Paris 2024 on the basis of their current world rankings.
As per the current World Archery rankings, Indian men (238 points) are placed second behind South Korea (340). Chinese Taipei (226), People’s Republic of China (212) and Italy (207) complete the top five.
“One of the biggest factors to win a medal at the Olympics is fighting spirit. The seniors have to lead from the front and it’s important to perform as a team. We have stressed a lot on process and not the target,” Singh said.
The Paris Olympics archery competition starts at the Esplanade des Invalides, a garden of Paris’ most beautiful monuments, on July 25 with the rankings rounds in all five categories. (ANI)
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