Three city archers – Jyothi Surekha, Ch. Jignas and Chiranjeevi Phani Bhushana Rao – have made it to the Indian compound team for the forthcoming world youth archery championship scheduled to be held at Wuxi at China from October 13 to 20.
In the selection trials concluded at Pune on Tuesday, World No. 36 Jyothi Surekha topped the table with 29 points (out of 32) and along with Maharashtra’s Sarikonda Jayalakshmi (28) and Rajasthan’s Swathi Dhudwal (24) she will lead the women’s team. In the men’s section, Indian Army’s Ch. Jignas took the second slot after Rajasthan’s Rajat Chauhan. Both of them along with Sudhakar Paswan of Punjab will represent India in the men’s compound section.
However, the overwhelming news is the selection of SRR and CVR College student Chiranjeevi Phani Bhushana Rao, who, after 18 months of lay off, made the cut in cadet segment.
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“Chiranjeevi scored 29 points out of 32 and finished on top. He was suspended for 18 months on disciplinary grounds from Volga Archery Academy. But he rejoined with dedication to prove his critics wrong,” said Ch. Satyanarayana, chairman of the academy.
Jignas and Surekha are the former trainees at the Volga Archery Academy and Chiranjeevi is presently trained by Jalumuri Rama Rao, an Indian Railways archer, at the academy.
“All these archers were identified and trained by late Indian coach Ch. Lenin,” said Mr. Satyanarayana.
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Chiranjeevi earlier represented India in the South East archery championship at Myanmar in 2010 and World Youth championship at Poland in 2011.
He also won many medals in the sub junior, junior and senior Nationals in the domestic circuit. Both Jignas and Surekha will head for Aurangabad where they will be taking part in the selection trials for the senior Indian compound team for both Asian and World senior championships to be held at Chinese Taipei and Turkey respectively.
The selections will be held from September 5 to 7.