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Upholding the verdict of the Thimphu dzongkhag court, the High Court (HC) on November 30 ruled in favour of Yangphel Archery Committee in a case against team Golden Arrows.

The judgement stated that in any sports competition, the decision of the umpire and referees will be considered final and binding. “If the decision is found to be biased, then the organising committee of the competition holds the absolute right to hand out the decision.”

Team Golden Arrows appealed to the HC on December 20 last year, reasoning that the members found the lower court judgment unsatisfactory.

However, the HC cited section 96.1 of the Civil and Criminal Procedure Code and section 94 of the Evidence Act and stated that the plaintiff could not prove the claims of the involvement of a player from the team in a physical assault incident during the match.

The HC judgment also stated that the plaintiff has not adhered to the Bhutan Archery Federation’s (formerly known as National Archery Federation of Bhutan) and Bhutan Indigenous Games and Sports Association’s (BIGSA) regulations.

The incident happened on August 18, 2015, during the 19th Yangphel Open Archery Tournament, where the committee disqualified two teams – the Golden Arrows and the Bhutan Festival, after it found that the two teams were involved in a brawl during a match.

Team Golden Arrows in their petition to the dzongkhag court stated that only the team captain was involved in the brawl and there was no reason for disqualifying the whole team.

During trial, eyewitnesses and match officials revealed that at least three players from team Golden Arrows were involved in the brawl. A video clip was also presented to the court as proof.

The committee stated that since three players of the six registered were clearly involved in the fight, a team with just three players couldn’t compete in the tournament.

The HC, in its verdict, also stated that the video recording confirms that a brawl had occurred during the match, which makes it a criminal case and should have been routed through the police.

Yangphel Archery Committee president, Tsewang Rinchen, said the committee is happy that the case was in their favour in the dzongkhag as well as the HC. “Following the verdict, there are pending administrative penalties that the organising committee will impose on the team,” he said. “But more than the team, it is a landmark victory for sports in Bhutan.”

Tsewang Rinchen said that the decision is considered landmark because it protects sports promoters and organisers from individuals who use the law to harass and disrupt tournaments based on personal agenda. “And it is historic because it sets a precedence and is the first of its kind.”

The Yangphel Open Archery Tournament was not organised since 2015 because of the on-going case. “Given the results, the committee is reconsidering whether we should continue organising the tournament or not,” Tsewang Rinchen said.

He said that if the tournament resumes, some of the members of team Golden Arrows would receive a lifetime ban.

Members of the team Golden Arrows did not comment.

Younten Tshedup | Trashigang Kuensel

27 Sep 2017         the dates of BAF International Style Archery Competition (organized & sponsored by Yangphel) has been moved to Sat 21st and Sun 22nd October 2017. The competition is to be held within two days to enable participation from faraway places.

The competition is open to both genders and will be played World Archery format or the international style at 50 m range. The competition will be held in Thimphu Langjophaka BAF Center. The first round will be the ranking round, where all the individuals would shoot 72 arrows (with potential of 720 points) and ranked according to the points they score out of 72 arrows or 720 points. Then the eliminations/ knockout round will commence with matches of 15 arrows each, the winners of which progress to finals.

For team ranking, the individual scores would be grouped for the 3 member team and ranked, from there each team of 3 players will shoot 24 arrows in the eliminations/ knockout to progress to finals.

There are more information on the format on the ‘Competition Rules’page .

The prizes would be given in Individual and Team categories. In the individual, the best archer (gold medalist) will receive Cash of Nu. 60, 000/- with a bow worth a lakh, the 2nd prize will be Nu. 40, 000/- with a bow and third prize will be Nu. 20, 000/- with archery accessories.

Also, the six top individuals from the ranking round would be given cash prizes ranging from cash 15, 000/- to 9000/- as the first 4 teams will receive cash prizes in the ranking round.

For the team prizes, the 1st team will receive Cash of Nu. 75,000/ and then the 2nd and third will receive 60, 000/- and 30, 000/- respectively.

There will be prizes for most Xs, Perfect End (full score in an end/ round of 6 arrows), top woman, etc.

And then the top individuals, if they agree to training schedule of BAF, will get the chance to represent Bhutan in upcoming Asian Archery Championship in Dhaka and then depending on the result there, then in Asian Games.

The competition is geared to bring the best Bhutanese archers to the international front and bring honors for Bhutan at the world level.

18th Aug 2017   In association with the Bhutan Archery Federation, the Yangphel Archery Committee is organizing a short workshop on International Style of Compound Archery in Paro Tshondue bacho. The workshop, a first of its kind in Bhutan is targeted at the archers of Paro for now, but subsequently it will be taken to all the regional venues of the Yangphel Competitions and around the country.

The workshop is to create awareness of the international style of compound archery competition or the World Archery Style. The Bhutanese have inherent refined talent in archery and has great potential to win honors at world / international level but this has not happened because the way it is popularly played here is quite different from those in international arena. As such, in order to address such a need of having our archers all around the country learn and practice in international style – to ultimately take the name of Bhutan to the top at world level, these workshops will be conducted all over the country.

Once every region have had their awareness workshops, towards the early October – a full competition will be conducted. In the competition, the ranking round or the qualification rounds will be conducted in different regions of Bhutan (if not different districts) and then eliminations (knockout) and the finals will be conducted in the capital Thimphu. There will be district champions declared.

This competition will be sponsored and organized by the Yangphel. The Yangphel Archery Committee will oversee the organization with technical supervision of Bhutan Archery Federation (BAF). The competition will serve to replace the popular Yangphel Open Archery Tournament and will feature attractive prizes (cash and kind) that are proportionately similar to earlier tournament. With the help of BAF, the winners will be given chance to represent Bhutan in international competitions.

The competition will be called BAF International Style Compound Archery Competition – sponsored and organized  by Yangphel

19th June 2015   To honour the 60th Birth Anniversary of Their Majesties the 4th Druk Gyalpo and Gyalyum Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck two new prize categories will be instituted for this year’s tournament – the 19th Yangphel Open Archery Tournament.

1. Any number of teams that hit 60 kareys or more in a league match would be given a cash prize of Nu. 60, 000/- each.
2. The top archer from each regional venue would be invited to shootout for an individual cash prize of Nu. 60, 000/-.

The new prize is in addition to the usual prizes awarded at the tournament each year. As always, there would be separate Best Archer prize, which would be based as (in the past) shootout among the top 15 archers from the league of the tournament.

This year’s special individual prize would be among the top archer of each region from the league. They could be or not be part of tournament top 15. If for some reason, the top archer is not able attend the shootout for Nu. 60, 000/- then the next best archer would be invited and so on. The shootout would be either be of 4 rounds or 6 rounds.

22nd May 2015      the list of players seeded for 2015 19th Yangphel Open Archery Tournament has been announced by the organizing committee today. The archers have been seeded based on their average performance in last year’s tournament.

This year, 180 archers have been seeded with cut off average of 7.4 and above while last year it was 7.1 Even though the cut off point have been increased, there are still more seeded archers than last year. It implies overall improvement in performance.

The individual average has seen slight increase to 4.3 as opposed to 4.2 of last year. The individual high remains at 13.5 average, which this year has been reached by Phub Dorji of team Tshering Metog from Thimphu Phaka region. From the same venue, the champion of 2015 tournament Tshering of Tashi Tagay rose, whose average though is lower to the top of 11.3 but his performance during the Best of Bhutan (top 15) Shootout made all the difference.

The region of Thimphu Phakha has the 2nd highest team average from among the regional venues of 27.4 kareys while Paro has the highest of 31 kareys across the teams. The Paro has also the highest number of seeded archers of 50 archers.

It expected that the performance in this year’s tournament will improve given that the tournament is being dedicated to the 60th Birth Anniversary Celebration of His Majesty the 4th Druk Gyalpo.

Like every year, the tournament is to start July 16th and end by last Saturday of August i.e. the 29th this year. The registrations will open by 11th June.

There are more details for each region in the Seeded Players page.