The competition as it is now organised bears resemblance to little before the 1972 Munich games, and the rules as they are now framed have been in operation for less than two decades. It is also a sport in which others must compete against a single country. South Korean men have not exactly taken all the gold home recently, but the women are so dominant that there float around absurd theories about a DNA advantage.

Mention that to Mangal Singh Champia, as he prepares his bow — a complex procedure that he, like all other archers, takes 10-15 minutes to assemble.

And he laughs, look, the Koreans have been doing this seriously for twenty years, we Indians for five-six. Also, how big are our respective talent pools, he asks, before answering himself: The Koreans 10,000, we 100. Nonetheless, hopefully for hasty good effect, the team now has the services of a South Korean coach, Lee Wang Woo, who has already shepherded eight gold medalists.

Confidence of experience

Champia is the lone male in the archery squad this time. A bronze medalist at Doha, the Jharkhand sportsman says he brings with him the confidence of experience.

His women team members too can look back to one moment in the recent past to recreate for themselves from experience one moment when it all came together so well.

Laishram Bombayla Devi, who comes from Imphal and is as open as Champia to explain to the curious and the ignorant the mysteries of their sport, says she rewinds to that day last October in Isfahan when she won gold at the Asian Grand Prix.

And Dola Banerjee would no doubt go back to her win at the World Cup in Dubai last year.

Vardeneni Pranitha, the last archer to qualify for Beijing, is just 17 and an improvement on India’s women’s team eighth place finish at Athens will certainly help.

‘Fifty-fifty chance’

Manager AKS Kang says the first step is the ranking round on Saturday. “We have a fifty-fifty chance,” he says, keen that the consequences of a single bad shot be kept in mind. “We’ll have no excuse but to perform.”

Athens is a disappointment, the archers are keen to battle. In 2004, India went to the Olympics on the back of men’s team’s fourth place finish at the world championships and a women’s sixth place.

After Athens, the most common explanation offered was: the wind the archers were unaccustomed too. So, this time, at least the Indian archers will not be complaining about the possible grey skies overhead in Beijing. Champia looks at the cloudy sky on this humid day, and appreciates the “conditions”.

They have all trained in Kolkata for similar weather conditions, and Champia says, let it not be windy, let it not rain.

Bombayla Devi is mindful that at the Olympics, Indian shooters and archers have been less successful in hitting the kind of targets they may otherwise. And she has a way of beating the pressure that could accrue from this background. “I will see the competition as a practice.”