Archers plan to train indoors, SAI finds the proposal absurd
November 24, 2017
NEW DELHI: It’s no secret that windy conditions have been the biggest bane of Indian archers in both recurve and compound archery on the international stage. The images of Deepika Kumari and Bombayla Devi crashing out of 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics in the preliminary stages of their competition due to strong winds are still fresh in the minds of Indian sports lovers.
However, it seems the Archery Association of India (AAI) and the archers aren’t ready to learn from their past mistakes.
At a time when AAI should focus on ensuring that the archers don’t miss out on cornering medal glory at next year’s Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast and Asian Games in Jakarta, the federation has submitted a strange proposal to the Sports Authority of India (SAI), listing out the training schedule of recurve and compound archers for these multi-sport events at indoor facilities in South Korea and Italy, respectively.
The proposal talks about training indoors in Seoul and Italy in December at a very high cost since the outdoor sporting activities, including archery fields, will be shut down completely due to the fear of heavy snowfall and low temperatures at both the venues.
It’s important to mention here that since AAI is de-recognised by the government for not following the national sports code, the proposal has been forwarded through the sports ministry’s national observer for archery, Sanjeev Singh in consultation with the archers.
AAI’s logic behind proposing the names of these two places is that the archers want to correct their technical flaws, which have crept in over the past few months.
One wonders how the archers are going to overcome the flaws at an indoor facility, where there would be no wind and the range would also be nowhere to the standard distance of 70m of an archery field. Since archery is an outdoor sport and the game largely depends on mastering the high winds and keeping bow and arrow in control, AAI’s choice of indoor facility defies logic.
