High-profile Asian Archery kicks off tomorrow
NSC only handover competition venue to BAF yesterday
Sports Reporter
Bangladesh Archery Federation (BAF) is organising the biggest ever archery competition in the capital when the 20th Asian Archery Championship begins tomorrow with 35 countries taking part in the meet at the Bangabandhu National Stadium. In a bid to be clinch the top position in Asia a total of 161 archers from 35 countries will compete in the weeklong competition when. Bangladesh will field 16 archers in the mega event of archery. BAF President Lt Gen (retd) Mainul Islam stated this at a press conference at BOA auditorium yesterday. BAF general secretary Kazi Rajibuddin Ahmed Chapal, technical director of the 20th edition of Asian Archery, Sanguan Kosavinta and World Archery Asia secretary general Sung Ho-Um also spoke on the occasion.
In the 20 edition of the Asian Championship, not only the best archers of Asian but some of the top ranked world archers will also take part in the competition. So far 33 out of 35 countries have confirmed their flight schedule. Most of teams would arrive in the capital today, said BAF president. He said Mongolia and Kuwait have teams already been arrived in Dhaka and did their practice session in Tongi though the official practice venue is Maulana Bhashani Hockey Stadium.
Meanwhile the BAF has selected the 18 archers for Bangladesh yesterday on the basis of their current performance, informed the Lt Gen Mainul Islam. The Bangladesh archers will contest in all ten events in the seven day meet.
Bangladesh will take part in the competition with the main target to finish among top 10 while the host is also dreaming to cross the quarterfinal in the recurve event, when their previous best result in this event in Asian Championship in 2015 held in Thailand, said Kazi Rajibuddin Ahmed Chapal..
Chapal also informed that targeting to this competition, Bangladesh team have taking preparation for last seven to eight months in Tongi but Ruman Shana, the best archer said that it would be better if they would have the opportunity to practice at the main venue at the Bangabandhu National Stadium at least for 10 days.
We did never practice like this time, we had every practice facilities in our own venue in Tongi, hope we will do good result, said Ruman Shana. Nishith Das, coach of the Bangladesh team said, Our target is to qualify in the semi-final, I have every belief on Ruman Shan that he would do good result. Besides Ruman, women will also do good result.
Among the top Asian countries South Korea, Japan, India, Malaysia and Indonesia teams comprised with the gold medalists in the Olympic and World Championship while three archers of Korea team (two women and a men), have won gold medals in Olympic Games.
Lt Gen Mainul Islam said, the result on the field is only the success of a big event but success is depend on good organising capacity outside the field also. So we are very much concerned about the security measures.
Replying to a query the BAF president said they would only get the venue on Thursday evening after the premier league football match although they sought permission from the National Sports Council to use the BNS ground much ahead. He further disclosed that BAF bought some sophisticated equipments to hold the tournament. It also kept arrangement for collecting sample for random doping test.
Both Sanguan Kosavinta and Euisun Chung expressed their satisfaction over the venue and said the officials of World Archery and World Archery Asia would assist the local organizers to make a successful event.
