ASI's archers primed to shoot for glory

The nursery of sports, grooming Indian Olympic medal hopefuls is going quietly about its business. And if the archery team, which PT met on Thursday is any indication, accurately as well.
All 22 archers of the Army Sports Institute (ASI) are among the ranked Indian archers who will vie for glory at the National Archery Championship to be held in Jamshedpur in February 2004.All 22 of are aiming to improve their performances at the meet.
West Bengal native Muni Ram Tirkey and Tarundeep Rai of Sikkim will individually represent the ASI, while Vishwas of Uttar Pradesh and Harish Kerai, Gurchuran Besra and Majhi Sawaiya of Jharkhand will be team representatives. Since a maximum of six entries are allowed from a particular state or academy, the rest of the archers will represent their home states. Archers from 18 states will participate at the championship. Coach Ravi Shankar is justifiably exuberant. He says, "I am positive that our team will win the gold at the Nationals. Our boys have been doing exceptionally well."
To optimise their advantage, the ASI brought in Korean coach Chae Hong Gi to train the archers.
The first Olympic trials are already complete and there are four more to go. Kerai and Rai''s skills make them the favourites to qualify for Athens. "If their performance remains as good as it has been in the past few months we are pretty sure to win a silver, if not gold at the Olympics," says Ravi Shankar.
At the 42nd World Archery Championship, Rai led India into the first ever Olympic qualification in archery. No Indian archer had every scored more than 1,300 points out of 1,400 in a national championship, a record that has been consistently broken by ASI''s archers over the last two years.
Their progress lies not only in their shooting proficiency, but also in archery equipment, on which the academy has spent lakhs of rupees. There are 28 sets here and every archer has his own set. Each set is imported from USA at a cost of Rs 1.25 lakh. Adds Ravi Shankar, "Only the international level archers in India have this sophisticated equipment. The performance of the archers has tremendously improved after we purchased these sets."
Concludes Tirkey, "The government is spending so much on us and we want to do our best to make the country proud of us."
anuradha.kher@timesgroup.com