28th Sr National Archery Championship from Jan 28 to 31

Jamshedpur,Jan 25 (UNI) Champions of women's world archery like Dola Banerjee, Internationals Jayanta Talukdar, Jhanu Hansda and Mangal Singh will be seen in action in the 28th Senior National Archery Championship, which begins from January 28 at the J R D Tata Sports Complex here.

Chairman of the Jharkhand Archery Association (JAA),the organiser of the championship, Partha Sengupta told newspersons here today that the four-day championship held more significance as the probables for the Beijing Olympics would be selected from this national.

Mr Segupta said the teams for Indian Grand Prix, to be held in Bangkok from February 25 to 29 and the second South East Asian Archery Championship to be held here from March 6 to 8 would also be selected from this tournament.

He said altogether 27 teams including 20 state teams and seven from various sports Boards across the country would take part in the championship.

Secretary of JAA, Arjuna awardee Sanjeeva Singh said eight to twelve archers would be shortlisted from their perforamce and final eight, four each from men's and women's categories,would be selected for the Beijing Olympics in June in presence of Archery Association of India (AAI) president Vijay Kumar Malhotra.

Male archer Mangal Singh and three women archers including Dola Banerjee had already qualified for the final selection, Mr Singh added.

He said apart from these selection process the qualification of the Jharkhand state archery teams and individuals for the 34th National Games would also take be done from this championship.

The event would be telecast live on Doordarshan while other private national channels would give wide coverage to it.

Jharkhand deputy chief minister Sudhir Mahto and state sports minister Bandhu Tirkey would inaugurate the championship while Jharkhand revenue minister Dulal Bhuiyan would be the chief guest on the concluding day,the organisers said.

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