भारत का ओलिंपिक अभियान आज से शुरू: रैंकिंग राउंड में निशाना साधेंगे 6 तीरंदाज; पहला मेडल जीतना होगा टारगेट

India’s first event during the Paris Olympics 2024 will be in archery. Team India will start its Olympic campaign this time with this event.

Archery was included in the Olympics in 1988. Since then Indian archers have been participating in almost every Olympic Games but have failed to reach the podium yet. Indian archers at the Paris Olympics will begin their campaign with the qualification round at Les Invalides Gardens on Wednesday.

Indian and French archery teams during pre-game training.

Event Details
India’s first day at the Olympics
Events: Archery Ranking Round (Men’s & Women’s)
Team: 1. Indian Archery Women’s
Event Timing- from 1:00 p.m.
2. Indian Archery Men’s
Event timing- 5:45 PM onwards

Must be in the top 10 in qualification
Experienced Tarundeep Rai and Deepika Kumari are participating in their fourth Olympics. The team led by them will have to finish in at least the top 10 in the qualification to get a preferred draw. Each archer will shoot 72 arrows and the scores of the 128 players from 53 countries participating in the qualification round will be used to determine the seeding for the main knockout competition starting on Sunday.

This qualification round will be important for the Indian team because the Indian team has often been seeded lower. Due to which they have to face strong teams like South Korea in the knockout stage.

India has high hopes from the men’s team
India has high hopes from the men’s archery team, which created history by defeating Korea in the World Cup final in Shanghai this year. The Indian team includes experienced players like Tarundeep Rai and Praveen Jadhav, who participated in the last Olympics, while young player Dheeraj Bommadevara won the bronze medal a month ago in the Antalya World Cup by defeating Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Mauro Nespoli of Italy.

All eyes are on Deepika in the women’s category
In the women’s category, all eyes will be on Deepika. Within 16 months of becoming a mother, she made a great comeback by winning a silver medal in the first stage of the World Cup in Shanghai. Ankita Bhagat and Bhajan Kaur are there to support her in the women’s team. This will be the first Olympics for both of them.

At the Paris Olympics, the men’s team final will begin on Monday while individual eliminations will begin on Tuesday. The mixed team final will be held next Friday and the women’s and individual finals will be held the same weekend.

Could not make it to the top 30 in Tokyo
At the Tokyo Olympics, all the Indian male archers could not make it to the top 30, due to which the Indian team was seeded 9th. India’s only female archer Deepika secured 9th position. India then had to face defeat against top seed Korea in their respective quarter-final matches.

Archer Deepika had secured 9th rank in the Tokyo Olympics.

India could reach the quarter finals
Indian archers have not yet progressed beyond the quarter-finals in the Olympics. India failed to qualify for archery only in Sydney Olympics 2000. Apart from this, it participated in all the Olympic Games, but could not improve its performance. This is the first time since London Olympics 2012 that all six players are included in the Indian team. Indian men’s and women’s teams qualified for the Olympics on the basis of ranking, which means that this time Indian archers will participate in five archery events.

Now let’s know what is archery
Archery is an ancient sport of India. The tradition of archery has been going on in India for centuries but its rules and regulations are quite different in the Olympics. What are the rules of archery in the Olympics and how are points awarded. Archery is divided into three departments target, indoor and field. World Archery has created these disciplines.

An Sun of Korea, who won gold in the Women’s Individual at the Tokyo Olympics.

Target Archery
In this discipline, there is a target in front of the archer, on which he aims. For recurve, this target is at a distance of 70 meters and for compound, it is at a distance of 50 meters. The target has five colors golden, red, blue, black and white. If a player hits the golden color right in the middle, then he gets a full 10 points. If the target hits the red color, then the player gets 8 and 7 points and the blue color gives 6 and 5 points. On the other hand, if the target hits the black color, then the player gets 4 and 3 points and if the target hits the outermost ring i.e. white color, then a player can get 2 and 1 points. The archer who gets more points in all the sets is declared the winner.

Indoor and field archery
In indoor archery, the archer hits the target at a distance of 18 meters. The Indoor Archery World Series started after 2018. On the other hand, if we talk about field archery, then an archer has to aim at targets of different sizes from different distances. During this, special attention has to be paid to the angle, length and distance.

Difference between recurve and compound
In the recurve event, the archer hits a target from a distance of 70 metres, which has a diameter of 122 centimetres, with a best score of 10 points. While in the compound event, the target is at a distance of 50 metres and an archer looks at it through a lens.

Points rules
In total, an archer shoots 72 targets, which consist of 12 sets and each set has 6 arrows to shoot. The winner is finally decided by adding the points obtained in each set.