2024-07-20 00:58:40
New Delhi: Only 10 days are left for the Paris Olympics to begin and the excitement about it has increased. Archery will be India’s opening event in Paris. It will begin on July 26, a day before the opening ceremony. There will be five medal events in archery and India will stake its claim in all of them. On this occasion, the NBT Sports team had a special conversation with Abhishek Verma. World Cup and Asian Games gold medalist (compound archery) Abhishek Verma may not be participating in the Olympics this time, but he has said some good things for the Indian team.
According to Abhishek Verma, ‘India has a mythological relationship with archery, but we have not been able to win a medal in the Olympics yet. I am confident that the medal drought will end this time in this mega event of sports. The Indian archer team can win up to three medals in Paris because our team is very strong. It has been performing consistently well at the top level for the last few years. I am also saying with confidence about the medal because this time the bonding of the team is looking tremendous. In the men’s team, the trio of Tarundeep Rai, Praveen Jadhav, Dheeraj Bommadevara is from the Army and has been training together for a long time. All three spend as much time as possible with each other, the effect of which will definitely be seen in the team event. Once the account is opened in archery in the Olympics, then there will be a flurry of medals in this sport in the future.’
Veteran Tarundeep is going to play his fourth Olympics and he would not want to return empty-handed this time. The women’s team consists of Deepika Kumari, Bhajan Kaur and Ankita Bhakat. As always, Deepika will once again be a contender for a medal in the individual competition. Deepika may have missed the last three times, but the confidence with which she made a comeback after becoming a mother is commendable. Her medal in the individual event seems to be coming.
The direction of the wind is often a big factor in the results of archery events. We can consider the wind factor as a major reason for our failure. Our archers are not used to playing in strong winds, whereas the wind speed does not matter much for European archers. The weather is good in France these days. The wind factor should not have any effect this time. Our archers have given excellent results in the last two years. Let us hope that this trend continues in the Olympics as well.