Rahul Banerjee hopes World Indoor Archery will come to India soon

KOLKATA: The Dola and Rahul Banerjee Sports Foundation (DRBSF) announced the launch of the country’s first Indian Open Indoor Archery tournament on Friday.
The two-day event starting on Saturday at the Netaji Indoor Stadium, will see more than 425 top archers of the country taking part.
Olympian Rahul Banerjee said they intend to make this an annual event. With the world archery authorities taking note of this meet, Rahul is also hopeful that one leg of World Series Indoor Archery will come to India soon.
The competition will see eight Olympians namely Deepika Kumari, Rahul Banerjee, Mangal Singh Champia, Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai, L Bombayla Devi, Laxmirani Majhi and Jayanta Talukdar locking horns for top honours.
The competition will be held in four categories -- recurve men and women, compound men and women.
The compound section will see top archers like Asian Games team silver medallists Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chauhan, Trisha Deb, Muskan Kirar and Madhumita Kumari in action.
“This format is very popular in western countries. The target here is placed at a distance of 18 metres instead of 70 metres in outdoor events. However, the size of the target is also smaller here,” veteran archer Dola Banerjee said.
On the first day, there will be a qualification round where each archer will shoot 60 arrows. The knock out round will be held on Sunday.
At the same time the event will serve as a good practice for the archers for the upcoming six-leg Indoor World Series which begins in Luxembourg on November 24.