World Archery Championships 2013 begins today, Indian women look to continue fine form

India will be led by World No.3 Deepika Kumari and will be hopeful of bagging some medals in the individual and team categories in the recurve discipline (Getty Images)

The World Archery Championships 2013 begin in Belek, Antalya, Turkey today.

The event marks the culmination of the outdoor archery season for the year. The qualification rounds start today before the quarter-finals and semi-finals, which will start on Wednesday, October 2.

The bi-annual event was last held in Turin, Italy, in 2001. The championships will see the top archers, both men and women, from around the world competing in the Recurve as well as the Compound disciplines in team and individual competition.

India have a 12-member team representing the country at the championships with 6 men and 6 women each for the Recurve and Compound events.

India’s hopes will once again rest on the women’s Recurve team, led by young starlet Deepika Kumari, who had recently managed to upstage the Koreans to bag team gold in the Archery World Cup

But, she will have a tough task, at least in the individual Recurve, as she will have to displace the two top Koreans in the field.

Korean archer Yun Ok Hee has been the most successful individual archer this year amongst the women and will be going for gold here, the only medal to have eluded her so far. She is ranked No.2 behind country-mate and Olympic champion Ki Bo Bae, and you can expect the two to fight it out for top honours.

Bo Bae missed out on qualification to last week’s Archery World Cup final, and will be keen on making amends by aiming for the gold here.

Add to the mix, India’s Deepika Kumari and China’s Cui Yuanyuan, who are expected to give the Koreans the toughest competition. Deepika is of course coming off a silver medal showing at the World Cup final in Paris last week, while Cui took bronze at the same event.

Deepika, formerly the No.1 ranked archer, is now at No.3, but will still harbour hopes of a podium finish

Alejandra Valencia and Aida Roman from Mexico and Inna Stepanova of Russia are also expected to be among the contenders for the medal positions.

The silver and bronze medallists from the 2011 edition – Kristine Esebua of Georgia and Fang Yuting of China respectively – are also participating,

The Koreans will also be the ones to beat in the men’s and women’s recurve team events. The Korean men are the defending champions from 2011 and they also claimed the bronze at last year’s Olympics and the women vice-versa (Olympic champions and bronze in 2011).

The Indian women’s team of Deepika Kumari, Dola Banerjee and Chekrovulu Swuro will have their hopes up though after having upstaged the more fancied Koreans in their last two meetings – the Indians pipped the Koreans to the gold in both Stage 3 and Stage 4 of the Archery World Cup in Colombia and Poland respectively.

India had won silver in the women’s team recurve in 2011.

You can catch up with all the action from the final of the competition live for free on 5-6 October at Archery TV Youtube channel.

India squad

Recurve

Men: Kapil, Tarundeep Rai, Jayanta Talukdar

Women: Dola Banerjee, Deepika Kumari, Chekrovulu Swuro

Compound

Men: Rajat Chauhan, Sandeep Kumar, Abhishek Verma

Women: Trisha Deb, Jhano Hansdah, Jyothi Surekha Vennam

Schedule

Monday – 30 September- Qualification Round

Tuesday – 1 October – Qualification Round

Wednesday – 2 October – Team Eliminations

• Recurve (Women, Men and Mixed Teams)

• Compound – (Women, Men and Mixed Teams)

All matches 1/8th and Semi-finals

Thursday – 3 October – Individual Eliminations

• Recurve (Women and Men)

• 1/48th and Quarterfinals

Friday – 4 October – Individual Eliminations

• Compound (Women and Men)

• 1/48th and Quarterfinals

Saturday – 5 October – Finals – Compound

• Individual

• Team

• Mixed

• Awards Ceremony

Sunday – 6 October – Finals – Recurve

• Individual

• Team

• Mixed

• Awards and Closing Ceremony