Incheon Asian Games to include compound archery

Archers practising on the eve of the Cherukuri Volga-Lenin memorial 4th mini (under-13) National archery championship at Vijayawada. Photo: V. Raju.

For the first time compound archery will be introduced in the 17th Asian Games at Incheon (Korea) from September 19 to October4, 2014.

Recurve bow archery has always been the only form allowed in the Olympics, Asian Games, South Asian Games and other multi-discipline Games the world over till now. Hectic lobbying by the Asian Archery Federation, whose president is from Korea, finally bore fruit as the latter gave the green signal to the inclusion of the semi-mechanised form of archery.

Now it is only a matter of time before compound archery will make its debut at the Olympics.

Compared to recurve, compound archery produces very high scores owing to the use of magnifying glass in the sight and use of pulleys on either end of the bow. Recurve is fully manual and much tougher to operate.

World Archery (FITA) has also been informed by the Incheon Asian Games Organising Committee (IAGOC) the inclusion of compound competition programme together with recurve.

At the Games, the archery competition will be held in two parts: qualification round followed by an Olympic round for recurve and qualification and match round for compound. There will be eight events altogether and 24 medals on offer at Incheon including recurve men and women individual and team as well as compound men and women individual and team.

Contacted, secretary general of the Archery Association of India, Paresh Nath Mukherjee, said this move would help in taking compound archery to a new level. Compound archery was introduced in India a decade back. Since then India has made rapid strides and won medals at the World Cup and Continental level meets.

The Indian men’s team won a first ever silver medal at the Shanghai World Cup Stage IV losing to the World champion the U.S. in the final.

The Indian women’s team also won silver at the Ogden World Cup Stage III. As recently as October, India won the men’s team bronze at the 17th Asian archery meet at Tehran where the women’s team narrowly missed the bronze medal in the play-off.

India’s I.R. Sanam won the individual men’s compound gold medal two years back at the 16th Asian championship at Bali (Indonesia). This was one of the big achievements by the Indian compound archers.