PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, Oct 1 : Steel city of Jamshedpur would play host to the action-packed 40th NTPC Senior Indian Round, Compound and Recurve National (men & women) Archery Championship slated to take place from October 2 to 10.
The nine-day event will take place at the Tata Archery Academy located inside the sprawling JRD Tata Sports Complex in Bistupur.
Nitably, the Tata Archery Academy is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The event will be conducted in three phases starting with Indian Round (Bamboo Round) event on October 2 and 3 followed by Compound event on October 5 and 6 and Recurve (Olympic) event on October 8 and 9.
Union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda, who is also the president of Archery Association of India will inaugurate the event on October 2.
The last NTPC Senior National Archery Championship was staged in Cuttack (Orissa) in March, 2019.
Thereafter, no Senior National Championship could be conducted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The event will provide a wide-ranging platform for the upcoming and elite archers of the country practising in state, centre and private-owned archery centres/academies to showcase their talent after a gap of about two and a half years.
Over 950 archers and team officials from 40 states and sports Control and promotion boards have already registered for the event.
Jharkhand Archery Association and Tata Steel are making efforts to ensure the smooth conduct of the championship providing comfortable accommodation, food, transportation, a well-prepared field and other facilities.
This unique partnership has organised many national archery
championships and even Commonwealth Archery Championship and Asian Junior Archery Championship at the JRD Sports Complex with overwhelming success.
Steel city had last hosted Junior Nationals in 2016 and Senior Nationals in 2014.
” Having such prestigious tournaments at Jamshedpur will certainly increase interest and inspire more youngsters to take up the sport and to develop more talent for the country in the years to come,” said Munda in his message.
He further said, “Jharkhand always ranks among the top teams at all levels of the national championships and in the last 20-22 years it has hardly any occasion come when there is no archer selected from Jharkhand in the Indian team for international competitions.”
Expressing his gratitude to sponsors Munda thanked NTPC for their incredible contribution to support the activities of the Archery Association of India as an official partner.
He also thanked Tata Steel for their enduring support to Indian archery.
The senior nationals is of significant importance as the top 16 rank holders in recurve men, recurve women, compound men and compound women categories will be picked from this championship for the trials to be held on October 10 and 11 at Jamshedpur which will be the basis of Indian team’s selection for Asian Archery Championship in Dhaka.
