NEW DELHI: After the conclusion of the third stage of the Archery World Cup currently underway in Paris, India’s Olympic-bound archers are set to come back to Army Sports Institute, Pune for another camp before flying out to Japan five days prior to their competition.
Earlier, the plan for the archers was to have a training camp in Kurobe City. But with Japan’s COVID-19 problem and the slow rate of vaccination there, all those plans have been shelved. The four archers -- the men’s team comprising of Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadhav and a solitary women archer Deepika Kumari -- will attend the Pune camp while the rest of the four archers who were part of the recurve team for the World Cup will be heading home.
“The next phase of the camp will be only for the Olympic-bound archers. There is no point in asking the other archers to be there. The Kurobe cancellation is a blow but we cannot complain. We now have to focus on preparing to the best of our abilities. All their paper work, accreditation and other details will be completed from Pune itself while there is also a lot of work on the COVID-19 front as well,” a top Archery Association of India official informed this daily.
The women’s team of Deepika, Ankita Bhakat and Komalika Bari failed to seal the team quota at the recently concluded Olympic qualifiers. Along with Ankita and Komalika, B Dhiraj and Madhu Vedwan who were reserve archers for the qualifiers and are taking part in the World Cup, will also be heading home. Prior to their departure for Japan, all archers will have to undergo regular RT-PCR tests and the Indian Olympic Association has assigned specific labs (as per a list shared by Tokyo organising committee) for that purpose. In the case of the archers, their samples will be sent to Mumbai.