World Archery Championships: Recurve archers qualify for Tokyo

India’s men’s recurve team qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after beating Canada 5-3 in the quarterfinals of the World Archery Championships in S-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, on Wednesday.

The women’s recurve team, however, made a disappointing exit, going down to unheralded Belarus 2-6.

The men’s team of Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Ramesh won the close first two sets 56-55, 57-56 against Canada’s Eric Peters, Crispin Duenas and Brian Maxwell to go 4-0 up. Canada fought back to take the third set 58-54 before India drew the fourth set (57-57) to clear their road to Tokyo Olympics.

The men’s team had failed to qualify for the Rio Olympics. Atanu Das, however, had made the cut in individual competition but lost in the pre-quarterfinals.

“We started off very well. I think this the best team we ever made. We worked so hard to get this point. We did not qualify in the last Olympics. So this is going to be a turning point for Indian archery,” Das told PTI.

In the women’s recurve competition, Bombayala Devi, Deepika Kumari and Komalika Bari were no match for Hanna Marusava, Karyna Kazlouskaya and Karyna Dziominskaya. The Indians were off colour from the beginning. They lost the first two sets by a big margin (43-52, 44-52). They recovered to pull one back (53-51) but went down by the same margin the fourth and final set.

It was a wasted opportunity for the girls as there were eight qualifying berths from the World Championships with all the quarterfinalists confirming their places for Tokyo. They will get two more opportunities to qualify.

The archers have been caught in an administrative mess in recent times with two different factions fighting to take control of the national federation. The World Archery Federation has even warned that Indian teams will not be allowed to compete under national flag.

First Published: Jun 12, 2019 23:23 IST