Paris: Minutes before India’s male archers were to take aim in their final practice session before Thursday’s ranking rounds, coach Purnima Mahato took out her phone and snapped a photo with Tarundeep Rai. There were smiles all around, even as Dhiraj Bommadevara was scribbling away notes in his diary seated next to Rai.

A few distractions have sprinkled this Indian archery squad’s preparatory phase in the lead up. Korean chief coach Baek Woong Ki was excluded from the contingent, while their psychologist Gayatri Madkekar is still awaiting her visa to join the group here, said Mahato on Wednesday. And then there’s the history with Indian archery, the “bhaar” (weight). It’s a term Rai used more than a couple of times in a chat after their practice session, and on which Indian archers have crumbled over the last few Games.

“Olympics aate hi medal ka bhaar aa jata tha (The moment the Olympics come, we feel the weight of a medal),” Rai, in his fourth Olympics, said.

The Olympics are upon the archers again, and Rai swears the “bhaar” feels lighter this time. The first test of that statement will arrive on Thursday, when the three men and women line up for the ranking rounds. How the Indians shoot there could give an indication on how their Games, once it opens on Friday, goes.

More so in the team events. The top four seeded teams — taking into account combined individual scores of the three archers in the ranking round — will get a direct spot in the quarter-finals. Eyeing that spot will be the men’s team, on which added spotlight rests. Ranked world No. 2 with fairly consistent results in the recent past, it won gold stunning powerhouses South Korea in the final of the Shanghai World Cup in April. In that World Cup, the same trio of Rai, Dhiraj and Pravin Jadhav finished second in qualification, and carried the momentum into the elimination rounds.

“Qualifying with a good ranking is really important for us. The target will be to finish in the top 4 or 6,” Rai said. “All six of us (men and women) have to take the good form into it and shoot well in order to earn a better spot in the draw.”

The ranking rounds will also determine the seedings in the individual event and which pair will combine for the mixed team event (the top male Indian from the ranking round, for example, will team up with the top female). The women’s team of experienced Deepika Kumari, young Bhajan Kaur and Ankita Bhakat carry more subdued expectations this time. And women’s coach Mahato prefers it that way. “Let them go about their thing quietly,” she said.

Deepika has lived through her share of Olympic hopes built dizzyingly high and shattered into dramatic pieces at rock bottom. First round shocks, quarterfinal near-misses. It mirrors Indian archery’s past few Olympics, and it all comes back to how this bunch can handle that “bhaar”.

“Earlier, we would invest a lot of our minds in thinking about medals at the Olympics. We wouldn’t think like that in training, or in other tournaments like World Cups,” Rai said. “But come the Olympics, we would take it (the weight) upon ourselves — no one else would put it on us.

“Now we have moved on from those things. Our only target here is to put on the best performances of our life. We’ve worked on the processes to do that, and not bypassing them to think straight about medals.”

The archery squad has been in France for about a fortnight now, keeping at it in terms of training and intensity. It’s a lesson from the previous Olympic experiences, a member of the contingent said, where archers would often tail off closer to the start of the Games on the back of World Cup medals.

At Esplanade des Invalides where archery will be held, Indians have had two practice sessions in the main competition arena, which is slightly different in design and wind resistance compared to the adjacent training venue. Even though weather and wind can be quite fickle in Paris, acclimatisation objective has been met, said Rai.

The addition of Dhiraj — Jadhav and Rai also competed in Tokyo — adds solidity to the men’s team, with his growth and consistency over the last year reflecting on the team performances that included a silver medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games (the women’s team also won bronze there).

“This year’s medals have kept the team’s self-belief high. And also sent across a message to the other teams that the Indian team can also be a contender,” Rai said. “But,” he quickly added. “uska bhaar hum leke nahi chal sakte (we can’t carry that weight into the competition).”

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