Mahabir, Yates shoot to Recurve gold

POINTS Archery Club’s Rahul Mahabir bettered his third place finish, at last year’s National Senior Indoor Archery Championships Recurve Men event, by firing to gold, at the 2020 edition, which concluded on Sunday, at the Central Regional Indoor Sporting Arena, Chaguanas.

Shooting to silver was Darnell Garcia (South Arrows) while Dean Wilkins (Central Precision) captured bronze.

Similarly, George Vire, of Points Archery, also produced an improved showing after winning gold in the Compound Master Men. Last year’s winner, Dexter Lallai (Central Precision) settled for runner-up spot this time around while Ryan Churaman (Points) was third.

Additionally, Academy Archery also fired to two gold medals, topping the field in the Compound Men and Women respectively. Peter Kong retained his coveted title trailed by Jonathan Thomas and Orlando Radiz (both of Central Precision) respectively.

Joanna Yates also bettered her 2019 third place performance by shooting to gold in the women’s division. She held off South Arrows’ Kitana Sookraj and Brieanna Ali, who both rounded off the top three in that order.

Although Points and Academy Archery captured the most gold medals (two each) and five each in total, it was South Arrows that

walked away with the largest haul of six medals altogether. South Arrows emerged victorious in the Recurve Master Men via Sherwin Francis and also secured three silver and two bronze medals.

TT Target Archery Federation general secretary Nikhil Kanhai said he believes the sport has grown immensely over the years and continues to attract newcomers. Kanhai said the sport began with just one club in 1992 and then grew to four by the early 2000s. There are now ten registered clubs in Trinidad and one active club in Tobago (Tobago Precision).

“Archery has been expanding a lot in TT. It has been growing and that is the whole point of having juniors and seniors on different weekends. There came a point along the way where we couldn’t accommodate both divisions at one tournament. And this augurs well for the sport. There are a lot more archers throughout clubs now but altogether there are about 112 competitive archers,” he stated.

Meanwhile, TT and regional archers are gearing up for the South Caribbean Archery Tournament, which shoots off April 10-13 at Chaguaramas.