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span class="inline inline-left">Bull’s eye: Indonesian archer Erwina Safitri takes aim in the final of the 26th SEA Games in Jakarta. Indonesia’s women’s recurve team won the gold medal by beating Vietnam in this Nov. 2011 file photo. Indonesia’s archery squad won a total of four gold and two bronze medals. JP/R. Berto Wedhatama Indonesia’s female archers were once in the world’s top 10 back in the 1970s and 1980s. But, now their successors will have to improve their accuracy and speed if they hope to win any medals at all at the upcoming London Olympics.

Indonesia’s legendary recurve women’s team — Nurfitriana, Lilis Handayani, and Tri Kusuma Wardhani — captured the Olympic silver medal in Seoul, South Korea, back in 1988. At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Leane Suniar came
home as the world’s ninth-best female archer.

“It’s not yet the time to talk about our Olympics’ medals target. Our main target right now is to improve our archers’ accuracy and consistency in propelling the arrows. They need to learn to shoot faster with better accuracy,” the head of athlete development at the Indonesian Archery Association (PERPANI), I Gusti Nyoman Budiana, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Nyoman was referring to the country’s four finest female archers, who at present are preparing for the London Olympics at the archery training camp in Bojonegoro, East Java.

Archers Ika Yuliana Rochmawati, Erwina Safitri, Novia Nuraini, and Titik Kusumawardhani aim to secure another Olympic ticket in the women’s recurve team event, after Ika secured the first Olympic ticket in the women’s recurve individual event in October last year, when she returned home as gold medalist from the Asian Olympic qualifier in Tehran, Iran.

The second ticket — this time for the women’s recurve team — will be competed for at the final Olympic qualifier at the Archery World Cup, stage three, in Ogden, the United States, in June.

In September last year, Erwina finished fourth at the Archery World Cup, stage four, in Shanghai after losing the bronze medal to Deepika Kumari of India. It was Indonesia’s best individual archery achievement of the year. The gold was won by Inna Stepanova of Russia and the silver went to Berengere Schuh of France.

“If they can improve their consistency, I believe we can speak a great deal about our Olympic target in the women’s recurve team event,” said Nyoman.

Although Indonesia’s women archers have dominated in the recurve individual event at the SEA Games since 2003, and in the team event since 2005, they have yet to secure a spot in the world rankings due to their rare attendance at the World Championship, the World Cup and the Asian Grand Prix events.

“We have a program for developing senior, junior and cadet archers but we have never had a sustainable national training camp. We only establish a camp whenever there’s an upcoming multi-sports event, such as the SEA Games, and then it all ends after the event,” said Nyoman, adding that late funding, lack of equipment and the lack of opportunities to attend international tournaments are “all too common” issues hampering the sport.

Thus, the lack of sustainability makes it more difficult to groom the country’s archers to become excellent in both technique and mental strength.

“At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, a change was made to the archery competition system, making the sport more mentally challenging,” added Nyoman. He cited the Olympic round system, which required two archers to compete one-on-one as early as the elimination stage, as well as the alternate shooting, which required an archer to shoot one arrow every 20 seconds rather than the previous 40 seconds.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the top five countries in the archery medal standings comprised South Korea, China, Ukraine, Italy, and joint fifth-place teams France and Russia.