Hyderabad: World Archery has announced that it will resume its Lockdown Knockout remote international event with recurve competitions to be staged in June.
Eight world-class recurve archers will be invited to compete in the tournament, which will start its qualification on June 5-8 with matches following on June 13-21.
Four men and the four women archers will be placed in separate brackets, which means the final will be between a man and a woman.
The concept was launched in May with a compound competition. It generated more than 4.5 million impressions on social media and record engagement. It was also featured on national television news in countries including Colombia, the Netherlands and Japan.
Colombia's Sara Lopez had defeated Anders Faugstad of Norway in the final of the compound competition, marking an important milestone in mixed-gender matchplay. Lopez had previously competed into two exhibition matches against men. This was her first victory.
As with the compound event, the four men will occupy one side of the bracket and the four women will take part in the other. The final will be between a man and a woman.
The winner will receive 1000 CHF and the runner-up 500 CHF in prize money.
The delay of Tokyo 2020 until the summer of 2021 has resulted in changes to the qualification procedure for the Olympic Games. Many international tournaments have been cancelled, with plans to reschedule the qualifiers next spring, and deadlines in the entry process have moved.
One thing has remained very clear, however.
The 87 quota places already awarded for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are retained by the National Olympic Committees whose archers won them.
It also remains the prerogative of the nations to decide who fills each place.
Indian men's recurve archers team comprising Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai, and Praveen Jadhav qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.
