New Delhi: Compound archery (mixed team) was included in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics on Wednesday, bringing cheer to Indian archers. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board approved the Games programme, also expanding mixed events in athletics (4x100m relay), golf, gymnastics, rowing coastal beach sprint and table tennis.
While archery has long been part of Olympics, this is the first time that compound will join recurve. India has produced impressive results in compound at world level. In 2023, Aditi Swami and Ojas Deotale became the first Indian individual world champions in compound. A compound bow is far more technical than the traditional recurve bow. The compound mixed team competition joins the existing five recurve events – men’s and women’s individual, men’s and women’s team, and mixed team – on the archery programme for LA, bringing the total archery medals to six.
“This is a monumental step forward for the sport and for the millions of compound archers worldwide who have long sought Olympic recognition,” said World Archery president Ugur Erdener.
Adding compound archery is another positive for India with squash and cricket also included for LA. At the Paris Olympics, recurve archers Dhiraj Bommadevara Ankita Bhakat came close to winning India’s first archery medal before finishing fourth.
“With a total of 351 medal events, 22 more than at Paris 2024 (329), the LA28 programme maintains the core athlete quota of 10,500 (5,333 women and 5,167 male athles), with an extra 698 quota places allocated for the five sports proposed by the LA28 Organising Committee (baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash),” IOC said.
Cricket men’s and women’s T20 competition will be six-team tournaments, as per the programme approved by IOC. Squash will be men’s and women’s singles events.
In shooting, the skeet mixed team event has been replaced by trap. That will disappoint Indian skeet shooters as Anant Jeet Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan missed bronze in skeet mixed by a whisker at Paris.
There was good news in boxing too. While the sport has been retained in Olympics under a new world body (World Boxing), an extra women’s category will be welcomed by India. The women’s divisions now are 51kg, 54kg, 57kg, 60kg, 65kg, 70kg, +80kg. The men’s weight classes are 55kg, 60kg, 65kg, 70kg, 80kg, 90kg, +90kg. The weightlifting divisions are yet to be decided.
In golf, besides the men’s and women’s individual stroke-play events, a mixed team event has been added. Table tennis will have six events after a mixed team event was added.
For the first time, all team sports will have at least the same number of women’s teams as men’s, with water polo adding two women’s teams, making it now 12 women’s and 12 men’s teams. In football, there will be more women’s teams (16) than men’s (12).
