New Delhi: Compound archery (mixed team) has been officially added to the program for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, much to the delight of Indian archers. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board has approved the Games' schedule, which also includes an increase in mixed events across various sports such as athletics (4x100m relay), golf, gymnastics, coastal rowing beach sprint, and table tennis.

Although archery has been a staple of the Olympics for many years, this marks the inaugural inclusion of compound archery alongside recurve. India has demonstrated remarkable success in compound archery on the global stage. In 2023, Aditi Swami and Ojas Deotale made history as the first Indian individual world champions in this discipline. The compound bow is significantly more technical compared to the traditional recurve bow. The addition of the compound mixed team event will complement the existing five recurve events—men’s and women’s individual, men’s and women’s team, and mixed team—bringing the total number of archery medal events to six for the LA Games.

“This is a significant advancement for the sport and for the countless compound archers around the globe who have long aspired for Olympic recognition,” stated Ugur Erdener, president of World Archery.

The inclusion of compound archery is a further boost for India, which will also see squash and cricket featured in the LA Games. At the Paris Olympics, recurve archers Dhiraj Bommadevara and Ankita Bhakat narrowly missed out on India’s first archery medal, finishing in fourth place.

The LA28 program will feature a total of 351 medal events, an increase of 22 compared to the 329 events at Paris 2024. It will maintain the core athlete quota of 10,500 participants (5,333 women and 5,167 men), with an additional 698 quota spots allocated for five sports proposed by the LA28 Organising Committee, including baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse, and squash, according to the IOC.

The men’s and women’s T20 cricket competitions will consist of six-team tournaments, as outlined in the IOC-approved program. Squash will feature both men’s and women’s singles events.

In shooting, the skeet mixed team event has been replaced by a trap event, which may be disappointing for Indian skeet shooters, particularly Anant Jeet Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan, who narrowly missed securing a bronze medal in skeet.

In golf, in addition to the individual stroke-play events for both men and women, a mixed team event has been introduced. Table tennis will now feature six events following the inclusion of a mixed team event.

For the first time, all team sports will feature an equal number of women’s and men’s teams, with water polo adding two women’s teams, resulting in a total of 12 teams for both genders. In football, the number of women’s teams will surpass that of men’s, with 16 women’s teams compared to 12 men’s teams.

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