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HomeUncategorizedDe-recognised federation, lack of funding hurt Indian archers' Asiad preparation: Coach

De-recognised federation, lack of funding hurt Indian archers’ Asiad preparation: Coach

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De recognised federation AV

The absence of a recognised national federation has dried up funding for Indian archers, who did not get enough time to acclimatise to the conditions here ahead of the Asian Games, recurve coach Sawaiyan Manjhi lamented on Tuesday.

Manjhi said the Indian archers should have trained here for a month to get acclimatised to the conditions and also played some test events.

But since the Archery Association of India (AAI) is de-recognised, there were no funds for foreign training and competitions for the archers before the Games.

“The government does not provide funds to a de-recognised body. Funding is the main issue. We should have come here last year at the same time and train here for at least a month then we would have been in a better frame of mind,” Manjhi told agencies.

“Or we should have played some test events ahead of the Games.”

The Indian compound archers trained in Sonept while the recurve archers trained in Jamshedpur and Pune.

High-altitude Pune has pleasant weather while Jakarta is very hot at this time of the year.

Manjhi said Indian archers won four medals at the Incheon Asian Games because they stayed put in the Korean city for a month, going into the event.

At the Incheon Games, India savoured its best-ever performance with Abhishek Verma (silver) and Trisha Deb (bronze) winning medals in the individual compound events.

The men’s compound team emerged champion ahead of South Korea and the women compound team also won a bronze.

“No sponsor is coming forward to support archers. There are few people like OGQ, who help but others are not coming because the Federation is de-recognised,” Manjhi said.

“There are huge financial issues. Though SAI has helped athletes by giving money from TOPS but there are few things which only the Federation can do,” he added, explaining the issues plaguing archers and coaches.

Manjhi believes host Indonesia will do well because the conditions are best known to them.

“You will see them doing well. If they were at some other place, they would fare different but they are definitely expected to do better here. Understanding conditions is very important.”

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