Final World Qualifiers: Indian archers seek to win Paris Olympics team quota spots

A six-member Indian recurve archery squad will compete in the Final World Qualification Tournament in Antalya, Turkiye, starting Wednesday. The event will continue till June 17. This is the last qualifying event for the Paris Olympics for all the archers.

The event will offer three quota spots in the men's recurve team competition while four quotas are on offer in the women's recurve team competition. India only won a quota spot so far, earned by Dhiraj Boomadevara in the individual men's category.

Both the Indian archery teams missed out on quota spots on the previous two occasions - the World Championships and the Asian Championships. Hence, they will be eager to grab this coveted quota at this final opportunity.

Probable threats

Indian recurve teams are one of the best in the world but are yet to win a Paris Olympics quota place. Ranked second in the world, the men's team will enter the tournament as one of the favourites to win the quota place.

However, they will face tough challenges from teams like China, Germany, Spain, and the USA. The main aim will be to attain a good ranking in the qualifying round and avoid these top teams in their draw.

Meanwhile, the Indian women's team are currently going through a transition phase, are struggling to find the rhythm and are heavily dependent on their top archer, Deepika Kumari. The lack of consistency will throw up a challenge to the women's team.

The women's competition will have one extra quota spot on offer, but the competition level is very high. The teams like China, Japan, Indonesia, Türkiye, Chinese Taipei, Italy and Iran will fight for these four coveted spots.

Format

The competition will start with the women's team event where the team will get a seed based on ranking round scores. Then, they all will be drawn to a knockout format elimination round. The winner of all four quarterfinals will secure a team quota spot for their country.

Similarly, the competition will move to the men's elimination round on the second day of the event. With only three quota spots on offer, only the two winners of the semi-finals and the winner of the bronze medal match will grab a quota spot each.

In the final two days of the competition archers of individual categories will compete to seal quota spots. The countries who have not won team quota will be eligible for individual quota (1 quota per NOC). India have already secured one male quota, hence, even if they miss the team quota they will not take further part in the competition.

However, the Indian women's archers might have to rely on individual quota spaces if they missed the team quota. There is no more qualifying event after this tournament, but there will be a couple of ranking quota spots for eligible teams.

Squad

Women: Deepika Kumari, Bhajan Kaur, Ankita Bhakat

Men: Dhiraj Boomadevara, Tarundeep Rai, Pravin Jadhav

Schedule

June 14 - Women’s Team competition (Ranking round + finals)

June 15 - Men’s Team competition (Ranking round + finals)

June 16- Women’s individual finals

June 17 - Men’s individual finals

Details

Dates - June 14-17

Time - Morning session (11:30 AM), Evening session (5:30 PM)

Venue - Antalya Archery Club

Place - Meltem Mah, Antalya, Türkiye

Live streaming

The evening session of all four days at the Final World Qualification Tournament will be live-streamed on the world archery's official channel Archery+.