Date:23/06/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/06/23/stories/2006062309262200.htm

Sport - Archery

Indians fail to make World Cup

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: Jayanta Talukdar and Jhano Hansdah were deprived of the opportunity to consolidate their position in the ongoing third Meteksan World Cup archery championship in El Salvador, Central America, owing to poor planning by the Archery Association of India (AAI). The four-day meet began on Wednesday.

Talukdar, currently ranked No.1 in the men's recurve section with 38 points, and Jhano, third in the women's compound group with 21 points, will be greatly handicapped when they will join the battle at Shanghai in China for the fourth and final World Cup in August.

The rules of the tournament stipulate that an archer should participate in at least three tournaments and finish among the first four to qualify for the grand final to be held later this year.

The Indian duo is in danger of being pushed down further in the points standing by missing the El Salvador meet and will be under added pressure to perform well in the Shanghai tournament.

AAI's failure

The AAI, did well to name the squads well in advance for the Antalya (Turkey) and San Salvador (El Salvador) meets, but failed to arrange visas for the team members, forcing the Indian contingent to skip the meet.

A highly placed source in the AAI revealed that the Indian squad returned home on June 12 from Antalya and was to leave for El Salvador on June 17 to be at San Salvador on time.

"The nearest El Salvador visa station is in Doha, Qatar, and we had just three days (June 13 to 15) to arrange for everything because June 16 and 17 were holidays in Doha. After failing to arrange visas for the entire squad, we tried to send Talukdar, who had the best chance of doing well, via the United States, but it refused to issue him transit visa without a valid visa to El Salvador. Finding no other way, we had to abandon the trip,'' the source explained.

Good news

The good news is that most of Talukdar's closest competitors, Magnus Petersson of Sweden (second with 31 points), Markijan Ivashko of Ukraine (third, 26), Hiroshi Yamamoto of Japan (21) and the entire Korean squad are missing from the third edition's starting line-up.

The Chinese, the Dutch, the Italians, the Britons and the lone Bulgarian, Yavor Vasilev Hristov (18 points) are in the fray along with a host of countries from the American continent including the U.S.A.