With the Indian women’s archery team peaking at the right time for the Rio Olympics, national coach Dharmendra Tiwari is confident that the trio of Deepika Kumari, Lakshmirani Majhi and Bombayala Devi can gun for a medal in the team event.
The in-form women’s team made the cut last year for Rio but the men have failed to qualify. On Saturday, the Archery Association of India will fill the lone quota place in the men’s individual section and Atanu Das seems to be frontrunner.
“The best chance for the women is in the team event. In the individual event, among the men, Atanu has been doing well and you can see that too. It’s tough in the individual competitions but he did well in the World Cup,” said Tiwari.
Even fellow coach Poornima Mahato believes the women’s team have improved vastly on their scores during practice. “I believe the girls can shoot close to 58-59 points on a consistent basis. And that’s the range which will help us in staking our claim for a medal in Rio,” she said.
Working closely with the girls here, the coaching staff has concentrated on helping them to handle the pressure.
“If you look at the format we hardly get 20 seconds to shoot an arrow. So in that time you need to draw, aim and then release. Sometimes if the archer lacks in confidence she might end up (missing the target). So that’s what we are focusing on.”
