Paris Olympics: Archers aim to break medal jinx, aim for first Olympic medal

A different year and another Olympics but for Indian archers the target will be the same fetching their first ever medal at the Paris Olympics 2024More or less regular at the Olympics since debuting back in 1988 the archers will kick off the nations Paris Olympics 2024 campaign on Thursday with the qualification rounds at the Les Invalides gardensFor the first time after London 2012 India will have a full sixmember squad after both the mens and womens teams qualified on the basis of rankings This means they will compete in all the five eventsVeterans Tarundeep Rai and Deepika Kumari appearing in their fourth Olympics will lead their young teammates hoping to securing at least a top10 finish in the qualification round to ensure a favourable drawEach archer will shoot 72 arrows and the scores in the qualification round of 128 athletes from 53 countries will decide the seeds for the main knockout competition beginning with the womens team finals on SundayThe qualifying round will be crucial for the Indians who have often slipped in the seedings and ended up losing to heavyweights Korea tipped to top the qualificationsAt the Tokyo Olympics all the male archers finished outside the top30 and got the ninth seeding as a team Deepika the sole woman archer there also got a ninth place in rankings Both ended up losing to topseed Koreans in their respective quartersOn form front India will have high hopes from the mens team which won a historic World Cup this year in Shanghai upsetting Korea for the first time in a finalThey will have the experience in Rai and Tokyo Olympian Pravin Jadhav while debutant Dhiraj Bommadevara will be on a high after beating Tokyo Olympics silvermedallist Mauro Nespoli of Italy en route a bronze at the World Cup Stage3 in Antalya just a month backIndividually debutant Dhiraj is seen as a bright prospect as he has tasted success by winning the Asian Games team silver last year albeit with different teammatesAlso ReadDining with Federer to pep talk with Rathore Sharaths 5 best Olympic momentsKnown to be ice cool in tough situations Dhiraj would look to overcome the bitter memories of Hangzhou Asian Games where he botched up his release twice to exit in the individual quartersDeepika will fight against herself in a redemption actAll eyes would be on her especially after her stunning comeback to win a World Cup Stage1 silver in Shanghai in April this year less than 16 months after becoming a motherLast time in Tokyo An San of Korea was her nemesis as she went on to become the goldmedallistThere is no An this time but they have another Korean in Lim Sihyeon who has defeated Deepika twice this year including in the Shanghai World Cup finalIf she gets going Deepika churns out perfect 10s at ease But at the same time she suffers from inconsistency and makes silly mistakes at crunch times If she overcomes her mental blockade there is no stopping her Indias high performance director Sanjeeva Singh saidDhiraj and Deepika if they manage to top their ranking rounds would be an exciting prospect for the recurve mixed teamDhirajs composure and Deepikas skills would complement each other well at the highest levelThe womens team on the other hand will be low on experience barring DeepikaAnkita Bhakat and Bhajan Kaur who have been Indian regulars in this Olympic cycle and won a World Cup Stage4 bronze here in 2023 are slated for their respective Games debutThey have together won the Asian Games bronze last year and will look to draw inspiration from thatTwentysixyearold Ankita who hails from Bengal but represents Tata Academy is relatively more experienced having won a clutch of World Cup team medals including a gold and silver both in Paris in 2021 and 2022 respectivelyAlso ReadRats a sole worry for Olympic hosts ParisThe archers Olympic buildup was marred by their foreign coach Baek Woong Kis return to India after not getting accreditation to enter the GamesThe South Korean who was contracted by the Archery Association of India for the Olympics at an approximate annual contract of Rs one crore had accompanied the team to their 10day preparatory camp in JauxBut he had to return after AAI failed to procure an accreditation for him as the sports body was engaged in a blame game with national federation IOAWhile there would be no Baek India will have mens and womens team coaches in Sonam Singh Bhutia Army and Purnima Mahato Tata whose archers have made the sideIn absence of Baek it remains to be seen how the Indians will cope with crunch moments especially while taking on archnemesis Korea in the knockoutsIndian archers have never been able to go past the quarterfinal hurdleThe script has been the same all these years barring in Sydney 2000 where India could not qualify for the GamesIn terms of cumulative performance the best ever show was at the last Olympics in Tokyo where the India mens team mixed team and Deepika individually all fell by the wayside in the quartersIndia were awarded the team quotas after topping the mens and womens rankings among nonqualified nations in the Olympic cycleThe mens team finals will be on Monday while the individual eliminations will get underway on TuesdayThe mixed team finals are slated for next Friday followed by women and individual finals over the same weekendWith agency inputs