Kathmandu, August 12

At a time when most of the athletes have gone abroad for foreign training, archery national team members are preparing for the 18th Asian Games at the Nepal APF Firing Range in Halchowk.

The players are happy with the training facility and believe they can better the previous best showing in the regional sporting extravaganza slated for August 18 to September 2 in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang.

Nepal are sending 185 athletes from 29 sports disciplines to Indonesia and the government has managed foreign training for the teams — mostly in India, Thailand and South Korea. Nepal Archery Association chose to stay back in the country and train here after they did not get the approval of Taiwan or South Korea. Five archers along with NAA President Dipak Raj Gurung and General Secretary Ramesh Shiwakoti have been spending at least six hours a day at the Nepal APF facility.

“We had requested the National Sports Council to allocate budget to take the team to Taiwan or South Korea for final preparation. But we did not get approval and there was no point going to other country just for the sake of going,” said NAA President Gurung, who is also the team manager. “We are really thankful to Nepal APF for providing us with the facility at a time when we had no other venue to conduct the close camp for the team,” added Gurung.

Gurung said the team was happy with the progress though. “We have been training for the last two months and the players have improved a lot. All of them are exceeding their previous best performance in training and we hope to fare well in Indonesia,” he added. In the maiden Asiad appearance in Guangzhou in 2010, the Nepali men’s team of Prem Prasad Pun, Ramesh Bhattachan, Jit Moktan and Asim Sherchan had advanced to the quarter-finals.

And Gurung hopes to go one step further this time around. “Looking at the training and improvements shown by the players, we can hope to better the previous result and at least advance to the semi-finals in Indonesia,” said Gurung. “We are satisfied with the training although this is not adequate for the Asian Games where we have to compete against the best players of the region. We have also taken this outing as a platform to get exposure for next year’s 13th South Asian Games.”

Nepal will take part in four events in Indonesia — men’s individual and team sections, women’s individual and mixed. Min Prasad Gauchan of Thasang Sports Club will lead the men’s team that also comprises Roshan Nagarkoti of Tribhuvan Army Club, Tilak Pun Magar of Nepal Police Club and Asim Sherchan of Kaski District Archery Association. Sherchan will rejoin the camp on Tuesday after undergoing training in United States. Gyanu Awale is the lone participant in women’s section and she will take part in individual and mixed events.

All four archers will take part in men’s individual recurve qualifying and those making it to the top 64 will advance to the elimination round. And the best among the four will join Awale in mixed event, while top three will compete in team event. To compete in elimination rounds, the players need to finish in top 64 in individual section and top 16 in team events. “As all the players have been hitting the target well and breaking their personal best scores in training, we can hope that they will make it to the elimination rounds and go further ahead,” said Gurung.

The Asian Games is also the Olympic Qualifying for the archers but Gurung ruled out any chance of the Nepali players making it to 2020 Tokyo Games from Indonesia. Only top three archers in individual and the gold medal winning team in mixed events will qualify for Olympics from the Asian Games. “We cannot expect our archers to qualify for Tokyo from Indonesia but we are hoping to earn a spot from three other qualifying tournaments. We are really pinning hopes on our archers to qualify for the Olympic Games this time around and create history in archery,” added Gurung.

Gyanu Awale, who was included in the Asian Games squad just a month ago, looked confident of faring well in Indonesia. “The preparations for the Asian Games are going well and we are satisfied with the way the association is handling the training,” said Awale. “My main target in Indonesia is to break the national record,” added Awale, who has been scoring up to 323 points from single set of arrows (36) in training. Her personal best is 306 scored on her way to winning the maiden mixed team event bronze medal with Tilak Pun Magar in the third South Asian Archery Championship in Dhaka earlier this year.

Nepal team captain Min Prasad Gauchan said the players were improving day by day. “We are hitting around 500 arrows every day apart from undergoing physical session. The preparation part is satisfactory and we are looking forward to perform well in the Asian Games,” said Gauchan, who won the NSC Championship with the personal best score of 643 points, and has been scoring up to 658 in training.

Team coach Shiwakoti rued the little support from the government. “We could have done even better had the National Sports Council helped us in training and other facilities. We were not allowed to go to South Korea or Taiwan for training and we did not have facility here to conduct the close camp,” said Shiwakoti. “But we managed this venue and the training is going good so far. We are happy to see the improvement in the players and we are counting on them,” he added.