A six-member Indian recurve archery team has been named for the World championship coming up at Turin (Italy) from July 4 to 10. The team includes Asian Games silver medallist Tarundeep Rai and Commonwealth Games women's gold medallist Deepika Kumari.
The team, to be accompanied by two coaches and a physiotherapist, will be captained by the Archery Association of India secretary general, P.N. Mukherjee. He will also represent India in the 49{+t}{+h} FITA Congress that will precede the championship. The team leaves on Thursday.
Sternest test
For the Indians the championship will be the sternest test. It is at the World meet that 35 out of 64 qualifying places per gender will be available for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
India can book a maximum of six places — three men and as many women — if the two teams win their first round matches in the team championship. The top eight teams in either section will make it to London and obviously the Indians' first target will be to do well in the qualifying rounds, first individually and collectively during the team championship.
The only time India grabbed the six qualifying spots was in 2005 at Madrid when both the men's and women's teams not only qualified for the Athens Olympics but was also placed second and fourth respectively.
Only Indian women's team qualified for the Beijing Olympics from Leipzig Worlds in 2009. Later, Mangal Singh Champia too made it by finishing second in the Continental qualification.
India has not entered compound archery teams owing to a huge difference in standard with other European and Asian countries.
Qualification rounds
The qualification round of the Worlds will be held over four distances. The men will shoot over 90m, 70, 50 and 30m while the ladies will have targets set at 70m, 60, 50 and 30m. Over each distance 36 arrows will be shot making it a total of 144 arrows for a total of 1440.
The collective score of the three individuals will constitute the team score. Top 16 teams make it to knockout round with the No. 1 placed team playing No. 16 team, the weakest, in the first round.
Till the last World Cup at Antalya, the Indian men's team was ranked No. 1 in the World but a first round elimination relegated it to the fourth position now.
As many as 571 archers from 87 countries have entered the championship out of which 338 are men and the rest are women.
The team:
Men: Rahul Banerjee, Tarundeep Rai and Jayanta Talukdar.
Women: Deepika Kumari, Laishram Bombayla Devi and Chekrovolu Swuro. Coaches: Ravi Shankar and Purnima Mahato. Physio: Jaidip Daschowdhury. Delegate and non-playing captain: P.N. Mukherjee.
