SUMMER OLYMPICS
Team Fiji Archery will be looking to secure a spot for Fiji at the upcoming which will take place in the Oceania Qualification Tournament for Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand this weekend.
Team Fiji Archery will be looking to secure a spot for Fiji at the upcoming which will take place in the Oceania Qualification Tournament for Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand this weekend.
Team Fiji Archers will include Kavi Gounder, Rajiv Solanki, Nathan Kirk and lone female Chaandvi Prasad and coached by National Coach George Fong.
"We are optimistic about our chances of qualifying a spot for Fiji," George said.
"We have the same chance and opportunity as the other five countries that will be taking part."
Fiji will face off against archers from New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and Palau.
George said athletes have been training hard and despite their individual busy sechudules, he is confident that they will perform at the Oceania Quaification Tournament.
"Should we qualify a quota position on merit, this does not necessarily mean that the archer that won the quota spot will represent Fiji. The local Selection Criteria will be followed, and the final selected athlete is subject to approval by the World Archery Federation" he said.
George said they would have to return to the country and hold another meeting to discuss who would be best suited to represent the country at the 2024 Olympic Games.
He said they will have a tough time trying to qualify for just the lone spot on offer at the tournament but he feels it will be a good experience for his archers.
The competition at this years Olympic Games will comprise a total of 128 archers, with an equal distribution between men and women (64 per gender).
Archery at the Paris 2024 Olympics will take place in the magnificent Esplanade de Invalides, in the centre of the French capital.
The competition will run from 25 July to 4 August 2024 and award five gold medals in total – in the recurve men’s individual, recurve women’s individual, recurve men’s team, recurve women’s team and recurve mixed team events.
The places are awarded using a qualification and quota system.
Athletes can win spaces for their countries at certain competitions during the qualifying period, which starts at the 2023 Hyundai World Archery Championships in Berlin and will end with the final qualifier in Antalya in June 2024.
Twenty-four teams – 12 recurve men’s teams and 12 recurve women’s teams – will compete at the next Olympics. There have been some significant changes to the process of qualifying a team since Tokyo 2020.
For previous Games, two-thirds of the squads qualified spots at the worlds (there were eight team quotas available). That’s no longer the case – with the tickets now spread across some continental championships and the world rankings, ensuring only the very best nations will compete for the two Olympic team gold medals.
Here’s how it breaks down per gender:
3 teams (9 places) – top three teams at the 2023 Hyundai World Archery Championships
3 teams (9 places) – continental champions in Europe, Asia and the Americas
3 teams (9 places) – top three teams at the final qualification tournament
1 team (3 places) – host nation (France)
2 teams (6 places) – next-highest-ranked teams on the world ranking list issued on 24 June 2024
If a team that’s already qualified qualifies again (for example, the Korean women win the world championships and then the Asian championships), the quota goes to the runner-up at the continental event.
The mixed team event, introduced at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, works in a different way. Any country that qualifies at least two individual archers (one man and one woman) to the Games can take part – and there is no need to win a specific mixed team quota.
