Ayear later than originally planned, the Olympics in Tokyo finally get underway with the opening ceremony inside an almost entirely empty Olympic Stadium on Friday night.

Only four Indian archers have qualified for Tokyo Olympics. Pravin Jadhav, Atanu Das, and Tarundeep Rai will represent India in Men’s Recurve, while Deepika Kumari is the only Indian woman Archer to compete at Tokyo Olympics. This will be Deepika’s third Olympics after 2012 and 2016. Archery will begin on July 23. It will be a week-long event that will end on July 31.
India first entered an archery team for the Tokyo Olympics in the 1988 Seoul Games. Since then India has fielded an archery team in every Olympics edition. In 2016, India’s Atanu Das was the only individual from the Men’s team to reach the final finishing ninth. In the Women’s individual competition, Bombayla Devi Laishram and Deepika Kumari finished equal 9th and Laxmirani Majhi finished equal 33rd.


Friday, July 23. This is only a day earlier than originally planned before Covid-19 pushed the Games back 12 months. Organisers managed to keep an almost identical schedule, aside from the 24-hour difference in start time. 

Unlike the last Olympics in Rio, which took place four hours behind the British Isles, Tokyo will instead be eight hours ahead. Once again, it is kicking off at a civilised 8pm local time, which is also much more civilised for British viewers too, as that means midday, rather than midnight. 

Numbers of athletes attending the ceremony will be severely cut back because of Covid-19 restrictions, although how much that affects the running time of the entire ceremony remains to be seen. For now, the official schedule reads 8pm-11pm (so midday to 3pm UK time).