KOCHI: It has been an eventful week for Kochi as a National Games host. Of the six events that were scheduled to be held in and around the city, table tennis and yachting have already concluded; archery and lawn bowls are in progress; and badminton and fencing are yet to begin.
While National Games with its overall appeal as the largest sporting spectacle in the country generally inspired interest among the people, the Games events in particular attracted little attention.
Even as the allegations of corruption, profligate spending and mismanagement at the inauguration ceremony helped the Games stay alive in public discourse, most of the Games event failed to draw crowds in large numbers to their respective venues in Kochi.The spectator turnout for the four events that took place over the last one week here was very low.
Archery, which started at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kaloor was a star-studded affair with no fewer than six Olympians shooting arrows for the golden bull’s-eye.
The event can draw a few parallels with that of the 2012 London Olympics. One is the presence of Olympians like Deepika Kumari and Jayanta Talukdar of Jharkhand and the other is the host venue itself. Both the archery events were held in the stadia that usually hosted cricket matches - the Lord’s Ground in London and the Kaloor Stadium in Kochi.
This is the first time in Kerala that an archery event is being held in a cricket stadium. And because of its enclosing galleries, it pitched a unique challenge for the archers to negotiate - the wind.According to Ravi Shankar, the Indian archery coach, the wind blows in a loop inside a stadium and it is enough to throw an archer’s preparations out of the kilter.
“Archers will have a hard time anticipating the arrow displacement caused by the wind. Sometimes, the wind takes the arrow a little too left and sometimes a little too right,” said Ravi Shankar.However, the ground, with all its expanse and cover, did not make the archers sweat too much inside.“Unlike the practise area (the St Albert’s College ground), it is not so hot inside the stadium. It’s very pleasant,” said Seema Verma, an archer from Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, a couple of unsavoury incidents marred the yachting event in Munambam.