Lankan archery team out to give of their best

Chris Dhambarage

ARCHERY: Sri Lanka will field an eight member team comprising of four men and four women for the archery competition of the 10th South Asian Games which will be worked off from August 23 to 26 at the Colombo Hockey and Football grounds in Maitland Crescent.

The Sri Lanka men's archery team includes Rajeeva Wickremasinghe, Nimantha Fernando, Muditha Thotagamuwa and Manoja Kodikara.The Sri Lanka women's archery team includes Sajeevi Silva, Dilhara Salgado, Sashikala Kumarasinghe and Dudili Silva.

The Sri Lanka men's and the women's archery teams are fresh after a successful tour of India and Bangladesh where they fared prominently despite performing against some of the top competitors.

But they feel that the experience that they gained from this twin tour will be of great importance and will help them to put up a good performance.

In fact the biggest challenge will come from the Indian team and Nepal with both countries boasting of some of the world class archers who are expected to make their presence felt during this four day championship.

Archery is of course the national sport of Nepal and along with India and Bangladesh they will be battling for the gold and silver medal.

The Sri Lanka archery team is determined to put up a good performance and they will be probably eying the silver medal or they will have to settle with the bronze medal.

The archery competition will be conducted similar to the Olympic Games where and archer has to shoot 72 arrows from a 70 metre distance.

The Sri Lanka men's and the women's archery teams have been training under the guidance of national coach Kesara Serasinghe who is the only level three qualified coach in Sri Lanka.