Archery carnival underway

Bangladeshi archers made a bright start in the ISSF International Solidarity Archery Championship yesterday, but the limelight on the opening day was grabbed by Libyan veteran Magdi Aburgiba at the Maulana Bhasani Hockey Stadium.

51-year-old Magdi, with grizzled hair, looked like a coach at first sight as the Libyan veteran kept his eyes constantly on the binoculars. But then he surprisingly pulled out an arrow and shot it at the 70-meter target as everyone realised he was the oldest competitor of the tournament.

With 63 archers from 14 countries taking part in nine events, there were even a few female archers who are as young as Magdi's 18-year old daughter. However, Magdi seemed to be relishing the opportunity to compete even at his age.

“I am proud to be taking part in the championship,” said Magdi after finishing 12th among 23 archers in the qualification round of the recurve bow. “You can start at the age of seven and continue till death. If you have good health and are willing, you can keep playing. Look at my bow -- it is seven years old and the arrows are nine years old. I have been shooting for 14 years now.”

Magdi coaches his 14-year-old and 18-year-old daughters and accompanies them during their travels to different countries.

“In Africa, I won a silver medal in the recurve team event. I finished third in the Arab Championship where I had shot all of my arrows outside the target just one day before the start of the championship but then I bounced back to finish third despite scoring equal with the second-place finisher,” said Magdi.

About Magdi being the lone participant from his country, his manager Mustafa Rabaa said, “We have many archers but they are busy with exams. Magdi is free because there is no government work, so he has come to represent Libya.

“We have been in so much trouble in Libya due to the civil war. There are terrorist attacks in many places, so the situation is not normal but we maintain our efforts to produce world-class archers. One of our archers had qualified for the Rio Olympics. He also won gold in the Arab Championship and finished second in Youth Championship,” Rabaa said through an Iraqi translator.

Meanwhile, Bangladeshi archers produced good results in the qualification rounds in both men's and women's recurve bow events as Roman Sana and Shaymoli Roy finished top of their respective events. Roman finished with 661 points but his teammates Sanwar Hossain, Tamimul Islam and Durul Huda disappointed a bit by finishing sixth, eighth and ninth respectively.

Shaymoli finished on top with 602 points while her teammates Beauty Roy, Radia Akter and Hira Moni finished fourth, fifth and eighth respectively. The elimination round of recurve events will get underway today.

“Most of our archers put their usual performance on the opening day even though a couple of them failed to carry their natural performances. Things happened as we expected before the start of the qualification round,” said Bangladesh coach Nishith Roy.