By Zainab Ali
RAWALPINDI: Archery is a sport of sharp sight, but this was proved wrong by a group of Archers at the Rawalpindi Sports Complex.
After blind cricketers, these blind archers are making Pakistan proud. They have such skills that they never miss a target. Tanveer Ahmed, especially has the honour of being Asia’s first visually-impaired gold medalist archer.
Talking about types of blindness, Tanveer Ahmad said, ‘’There is an international classification; one of our categories is VI-1 which includes those who are totally blind and cannot see anything at all; then there is another category which is VI 2 or 3. It includes those who can recognize objects from two to three meters such as myself.’’
Archers: “Weakness is our strength”
Talking about the difficulties faced by blind archers, he said that if we look ahead by making our weakness our strength, then we can do anything. ‘’We won five medals this year for our country; no one in Asia has won a medal in this game till date,’’ he added.
Tanveer said: ‘’Our coach has trained more than 12 blind women before. Since then, I have also got fond of this game.’’ He said there are very few opportunities in sports for the visually impaired, and he is training other visually impaired people along with him.
In response to a question regarding the cost of training instruments, he said that to play at the international level, it is necessary to have good-quality equipment, which is very costly. Tanveer Ahmed expressed his desire to win the gold medal for Pakistan as an individual, for which he is working hard.
How can visually impaired people do archery? Responding to this question, Tanveer Ahmed said: “It is a game that common people find very difficult to play, let alone playing it without vision; all credit goes to our coach.”
He added: “I have the honour of being number one archer in Pakistan, and we as a team have proved that although we don’t have many resources, our passion took us forward.”
