India will be pinning their hopes on the compound archery team to bag medals. Abhishek Verma, the champion archer, is one the prime contenders to clinch a podium finish. He sounds pretty confident of a good show in the games this year.
Verma has been a consistent performer for India and has won two World Cup gold medals and a silver. However, the Asian Games will not have any individual medal events and he will be competing in the team event and a mixed pair event.
"But that (no individual events in compound archery) will be the same for everyone. We have mixed pair event inducted now, so either way, I stand a chance to win two medals," Verma said.
"Definitely, there will be medals in all the three sections -- men's and women's team events and mixed pair -- but it's difficult to predict the colour of medal right now. It will depend on that particular day and the conditions," he added.
There will be pressure on India since they are the defending champions, but Verma believes that the team is strong and they should bag a couple of medals.
'We will not be under pressure'
"We will not be under pressure. It's just that we will look to bag both the medals (team and mixed pair). All teams are very strong. We will look to give them competition, not the other way round," he said.
On the other hand, the recurve archery team has not been in the best of forms and have slipped to number 12 from the number one position. The slide began when India returned empty-handed in the recurve section at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games. However, Verma has thrown his weight behind the Indian team to perform better this year.
"They did not win any but we won four. I'm sure we will win three in compound and three in recurve in Indonesia this time. There was a time when they won all the medals, hopefully, good days will be back again soon," he said.
The archer said that the improvements can be seen primarily because of the Sports Authority of India Center at Sonepat.
"The biggest secret is the Centre of Excellence at SAI Sonepat. We spend our entire year here. We don't go around, we stay here completely focused on shooting. Full credit goes to COE Sonepat SAI. This is the only reason why we have been doing well consistently," he quipped.
