It was eventful day in the 20th Asian Archery Championship as local hopes lived up to the top billing as Roman Sana produced his international best scores to finish 11th out of 79 archers in the qualification round of men’s individual recurve event.
However, his achievement was over shadowed while a world record in women’s compound team event on the opening day at Bangabandhu National Stadium on Sunday.
On whom lays all the local hopes hogged the headlines as he marched on to the semifinals, eclipsed his previous best of 664 sets in ISSF Islamic Solidarity Archery Championship in Dhaka by scoring 666 out of 720 while his teammates Tamimul Islam, Hakim Ahmed Rubel and Sheikh Ibrahim Rezowan became
31st, 41st and 65th with scores of 660, 638 and 601 respectively to compete in the elimination round which begins tomorrow.
Sana and Tamimul, however, have received bye in the first elimination round while Rubel and Rezowan will have to fight against Rogelio Miguel of Philippines and Gaurav Trambak Lambe of India respectively to avoid the first elimination round.
As expected South Korean archers reign supreme as they posted impressive performances in the qualification rounds to grab the first two position with Kim Jongho and Lee Woo Seok scoring 684 ad 682 while the third position went to the Indian archer Atanu Das, who made 680.
The first top eight archers in the qualification round have been given bye till the second elimination round and they will enter the competition from the third eliminated round.
Roman Sana, who also qualified for the quarterfinals of last edition Asian Archery Championships in Thailand, was a bit ecstatic after putting his best but he believes he could have done better had he not felt nervous from the beginning.
“Initially I was a bit nervous, so I hit poor in the first three arrows but the coach made me rectify and I returned to my natural performance,” said Sana.
“However, I am happy that I made more score than what I have expected and if I can carry this performance to the elimination round, then I can hope to reach my target of quarterfinals.”
“As I finished nearly top ten, so I expect that the opponents will be a bit of easy in the first three elimination rounds but then, it will be harder because many world class archers are competing here,” said Sana, who is also happy that Bangladesh men’s recurve team also did their best to score 1954 at international level.
“The boys and girls kept their practice consistency to the competition as they made today what they did in practice sessions. Both teams in recurve and compound also did well and I expect Roman Sana will play the quarterfinals and there is also good chance for Tamimul to do better further,” said coach Nisith Das.
