Made sure that all top archers participate in Nationals: Malhotra

New Delhi: The AAI president V K Malhotra on Saturday said that in order to make the competition tougher, they wanted all the top archers to participate in the ongoing National Ranking Championship which will be considered as trial for World Cup (Stage III) in Columbia.

"I was not satisfied with our performance in the last leg of the World Cup as didn`t perform as per expectations and the Recurve team didn`t do well. So we made sure that every one participates in the trials and work a bit harder," Malhotra told reporters on the sidelines of the championship being held at the Yamuna Sports Complex. Malhotra also stressed on the need to have a good team of Compound Archers as the event will be a part of the Asian Games in Incheon, next year. "Other countries are progressing well. We have won a silver medal in Compound category for the first time in the World Cup. Now Compound event has been included in the Asian Games which wasn`t the case earlier. Such events will help the archers and the incentives that comes along will be an added bonus. Some of the top-notch archers have lamented about the lack of ground which is only cut out for archers. "The problem is that we have 59 associations and grounds are to be provided by SAI and Goverment and we have been requesting for that. See this is a sport in which grounds have to be prepared by the Government. At the moment, government is not paying anything to the Federation but they are felicitating the archers to participate in the International Events." PTI