Miffed archer lashes out

Fri, Jul 4 01:35 AM

IN THE past one year, Indian archery has witnessed the best and the worst of times. While Dola Banerjee brought home laurels when she won the World title in Dubai last year, the male archers failed to make it to the team competition in the Olympics.

On Thursday, however, there was some more bad news for the Archery Association of India (AAI) as an India team regular Reena Kumari lashed out, questioning AAI's selection criteria. Reena, it should be noted, could not win an Olympic berth after the final trials ended last week.

"How could they overlook my past record just because I wasn't at my best on that one day," said the archer who finished fifth in the trials. It should be noted that the top two, Dola and V. Pranitha, got through and joined Bombayla Devi who, according to the AAI, qualified through the World Championship in Leipzig.

Strangely, the AAI held three trials this time. The first one was held in March and was followed by another in May, through which Reena qualified.

What irked Reena was that once she was told she had qualified in the May trials, and was on her way to Korea for an Olympic training camp, she was recalled for another set of trials. "I was at the airport when I was told that I will have to appear for the trials since our team had not performed well in Turkey," she said.

Reena stood 28th in the Turkey World Cup this year, with Bombayla coming 48th. Dola, however gave the worst performance of her career, coming 67th.

"The same person cannot come first every time the trials are held. At first, I qualify, and then I'm made to go through the trials again because others have not performed well! I met Vijay Kumar Malhotra, president of AAI .

To my surprise, he said he could not help me." When contacted, AAI vice-president Paresh Nath Mukherjee defended AAI's stance.

"We thought we needed to hold another set of trials as the team had fared very badly, and everyone was made to appear in it. If we had to select Dola, we wouldn't have fielded her in the trials.

Dola and Pranitha have qualified through a proper process.".

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