New Delhi,
Indian archery is dying a slow death. The substantial gains it made after Deepika Kumari’s historic gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games are being frittered away. Quite surprisingly, the Archery Association of India (AAI) is responsible for the mess the sport is in. AAI’s administrative wrangling and its failure to comply with government’s Sports Code have hit the sport hard. It has been five years since the Sports Ministry de-recognised AAI but the association doesn’t seem to care at all.

Amidst this chaos, the performance of the archers has gone down. Recently, Deepika crashed out in the first round of the World Cup Final in Rome after losing to Chinese Taipei’s Tan Ya Ting 6-0. She was the only Indian to have qualified for the event. Deepika last won an individual international medal in October 2015 when she bagged a silver at the World Cup. The last time India won a medal in the recurve category was in June 2016, with Deepika and Atanu Das winning a silver in the mixed-pair event at the World Cup in Antalya. The compound archers, too, are sailing in the same boat — they just have one team gold to show from the World Cup ‘Stage 1’ in China this year. Clearly, Indian archery is heading towards a gloomy future.

“We have a World Championship coming up in Mexico City from October 13 to 23. But don’t expect any medals from us. We would be entering the tournament with zero hope,” said a senior archer on the condition of anonymity. “The federation doesn’t have time for us and to fulfil our long-standing demand for a permanent Indian and a foreign coach. In the absence of coaches, our performance has taken a serious hit.”

AAI had hired South Korea’s Chae Woong Lim for three years as the chief coach, but he was shown the door after the Rio debacle. Since then, there has been no one at the helm. Every time AAI was asked about the vacant position, it would say “we are in the midst of shortlisting the candidates”.

Recently, AAI had shortlisted two South Koreans but it dropped the idea after the Delhi High Court appointed former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi as its Administrator. The court told AAI that it couldn’t spend any money without the Administrator’s permission. Since AAI has decided to challenge Quraishi’s appointment, the selection of Korean coaches has been put on hold.

After the exit of Dharmendra Tiwary as the head coach post Rio, AAI has been using a rather strange strategy to appoint a coach with the team. Under this system, the archers are told to write the name of their personal coach on a form before the start of the season. A coach with a maximum number of archers under his/her tutelage gets selected for international competitions. This has resulted in Chungda Sherpa (men’s) and Purnima Mahato (women’s) accompanying the team on most of the occasions.