Rubel, Diya looking to improve further

Hakim Ahmed Rubel and Diya Siddique are looking forward to performing better in future after the pair finished the 22nd Asian Archery Championships campaign with a silver medal, settling for second position behind South Korea in recurve mixed team event on the concluding day at the Army Stadium in Banani yesterday.

The silver medal means Bangladesh bagged a total of three medals in the Asian Championships for the first time, finishing joint-third along with Kazakhstan in the medals team table. South Korea, as expected, dominated the table with nine gold, three silver and nine bronze medals while India finished second with one gold, four silver and two bronze medals. 

Beating Lee Seungyun and Royoo Su Sung in the final of recurve mixed team event would have been a big upset for Rubel and Diya, but it was not to be as the South Korean archers won comfortably by 5-1 set points even though the Bangladeshi pair managed to draw the last set at 38-38 points. Despite the defeat, Rubel and Diya were satisfied but believed they could have fought harder had they been able to adjust playing against the wind.

"We could not understand the movement of the wind in the final even though we had hardly faced any problem with the wind during our practice sessions. Actually, we lost the match for not understanding the wind movement. I think we have learnt a lot from the championships and it will help us in future competitions," said Rubel. Echoing the same sentiment, Diya said, "I was confident of shooting well but we could not understand the movement of wind. However, I am happy with the silver medal and I am looking forward to doing better in my next attempts."

Bangladesh team's coach Martin Frederick was happy to see his charges put up some courageous performances in the qualification round which set some new national records. 

"We set several national records in the qualification rounds (compound men's and recurve women's), which means we are in the right direction. Mixed team's performance not enough to win gold but we won silver, which is really nice," Frederick said.