Indian team for world meet

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA, AUG. 26.An eight-member Indian squad was selected on Sunday after four days of hectic trials to represent India in the ensuing 41st world outdoor target archery championship to be held at Beijing from September 15 to 22.

The trials, held at the Sports Authority of India, Eastern Centre, here for the past four days had 52 participants who had scores of 1200 points and above in the last Nationals held at Amravati (Maharashtra). Speaking to The Hindu, the senior most vice-president of the Archery Association of India (AAI), Mr. Paresh Mukherjee, in-charge of the trials and selection of the Indian contingent, said a system was evolved to choose the best four men and women.

At the end of the trails, Jharkhand's Olympian from Mizoram, Lalrem Sanga, topped the men's standing. Kailash of Uttar Pradesh, Acharya Ved Kumar of Ordnance Factory SCB and Satyadev Prasad also of U.P. followed him. In fact, the last three were products of Meerut-based Gurukul.

Dola Banerjee, a lady from Bengal under contract with the Tata Archery Academy (TAA), Jamshedpur, led the women's standing. She was followed by Chekrevolu Swuro, from Nagaland, was second and Meghalaya's Bansaralin Dhar, a pure TAA product, came third to make her India debut. Veteran Jhanu Hansda of TAA was fourth.

World and Olympic gold medallist South Korean, Choo In Soo, will be the team's coach. A gold medallist in the 1985 world meet, 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympics, both at Seoul, Choo is all set to train the Indians in the forthcoming Asian championship to be held in Hong Kong in December. Mr. Mukherjee said that the contingent for the Asian meet would be named basing the performance of archers both in the trails and the world meet.

The selection trials, confirming to the stringent method, had all the 52 competing in one double FITA round competition where all shot 288 arrows. Then the 52 competed against fixed target at 70m and shot four rounds of 36 arrows (144 in all). Basing these, eight best men and women were picked and pitted in a round-robin format in the Olympic round system and graded.

The most heartening outcome of the four-day trials was 1300 plus scores achieved by both Kailash and Dola. warned the official.

The squad: Men: Lalrem Sanga (Jharkhand), Kailash and Satyadev Prasad (both U.P.) and Acharya Ved Kumar (OFSCB). Women: Dola Banerjee, Chekrevolu Swuro, Bansaralin Dhar and Jhanu Hansda (all Jharkhand). Coach: Choo In Soo (South Korea).

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Next     : Sarita storms into semifinals