But this time, in Beijing, it can be different story altogether if the Indian archers chosen to represent the country live up to their billings.
The Indian archers have already created a flutter across the globe over the past few years and that has ignited hopes, writes Sanjib Guha
Medals have eluded India since the inception of Olympic Games and there have been several occasions when Indians were kept ruing after missing out on medals by proverbial whiskers.
But this time, in Beijing, it can be different story altogether if the Indian archers chosen to represent the country live up to their billings.
Indian archers have already created a flutter across the globe in the last few years and that has ignited the hopes among Indians that they would come back with a laurel, if not laurels. The members of the Indian team, surely, have it in them to outscore the competitors from other countries.
Country’s numero uno archer Dola Banerjee, who was passing through a lean phase, succeeded in getting a Beijing berth only after the last round of trials last month. But that doesn’t mean that her participation would be a damp squib.
Knowing Dola, one would say that she has the habit of bouncing back when against the wall and that exactly had happened in the ultimate trials at the SAI Eastern Centre (Kolkata) on June 29, when the 27-year-old archer bulldozed her way to the Indian side and that too with a much improved performance.
Dola, it may be recalled, became World champion in archery by winning the gold medal in the women’s individual recurve competition at the archery World Cup held in Dubai last year. She was the first Indian lady archer to qualify for the Olympics in 2004; won the 18th Golden Arrow Grand Prix tournament at Antalya; won gold in 2006 South Asian Federation (SAF) Games. Another competent archer, Laishram Bombayla Devi will also have a big role in India’s faring in Beijing along with rookie V Pranitha to spring some surprise. A string of superb performances in recent times enabled Bombayla to make the cut.
The 17-year-old Pranitha, hailing from Parvathagiri village of Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh is now being trained at the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur, topped the trials (Kolkata) with a total of 5,167 out of a possible 5,760 points recently. Dola finished second in the trial scoring 5,141 points.
Dola was optimistic saying that if things fall in place, they can pull off a medal. “We are practising hard and trying not to put pressure on us, we will go in a free mind and then see what happens,” Dola said. But the lady archer was a bit skeptical about the 12-arrow system followed nowadays. “In this 12-arrow system, every archer gets 12 chances and if someone fails in one attempt, you have no chance to recover…that’s how top archers from China and Korea are also suffering,” Dola told the DNA.
But she confirmed that the medal prospect is more in the team event rather than in the individual category. The only male archer boarding the Beijing flight will be Mangal Singh Champia, who is believed to be at his best at the moment. Though taking part only in the individual event, Champia is thought to be one who will excel when the time comes. However, the Archery Association of India (AAI) senior vice-president Pareshnath Mukherjee was quite pessimistic about India’s chances. “We are going there to compete and not to win medals,” Mukherjee said.
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