It brings excitement and drama: World Archery executive director lauds APL

India is a haven for franchise sports, with every discipline hoping to go the IPL way to not only make a sport widely adopted, but also eventually commercially viable.

World Archery executive director Juan Carlos Holgado credited India for daring to do the same with the Archery Premier League, the world’s only franchise-based league in the sport.

“Anil Kamineni (APL director) said we’ve to do something to change archery, go to the next level, make it more friendly for TV, get more spectator interest, make it fun by combining recurve and compound,” Holgado told The Hindu.

“It was hard for me to see (back then) what he saw. He was a visionary, but he had the determination to make it happen. The first season worked very well, better than we expected! Many countries are afraid to fail, so they make sure everything is in place before starting. India just went for it and fixed it on the way.”

The 1992 Olympic gold medallist (men’s team recurve) said that he found the idea of mixing recurve and compound archers very intriguing.

“It was like mixing water and oil! But it happened. By the fourth day (of the inaugural season), the compound and recurve archers got the hang of what the other would need.”

The 15-second shot clock, five seconds faster than the standard, also has his backing.

“I was involved when World Archery went from 30 seconds to 25 then to 20, so I cannot criticize it. Some say if you shorten it too much, you sacrifice accuracy, which is true. But it brings excitement and we need that excitement, emotion and drama in archery. Teams now train and plan around it. They’re like icemen and icewomen!”

The 58-year-old knows international play is different, saying, “They are two different products. We can learn from each other.”

The biggest satisfaction for the Spaniard, however, lies off the range. “It’s great to see how the Archery Association of India has grown in delivering events. In the past they needed 60 or 70 percent of our help. Now 90 percent is done by them.”