FITA, the archery world governing body, was on a plan to make archery an internationally recognized sport for the London Olympic Games, said FITA Secretary General and Executive Director Tom Dielen in Beijing on Wednesday.

"We have been working since 2005 on a plan and our goal is to make archery an internationally recognised sport for the London 2012 Games. We are mainly focusing on improving competition between the Olympics," said Dielen.

"The fact that our president (Ugur Erdener) was selected out of 110 candidates shows that we are on the right track for recognition, but it's not something that happens right away.

"The first thing is presentation. We know that we are going to be at one of the most famous venues, Lord's cricket field.

"The second thing is the use of court A and B. We might reconsider having two fields and maybe prolong the schedule a little bit. We may be having three sessions a day and one finals field.

"We might consider the way we score. We're going to do testing with the set system. And we will continue to work with broadcasters to make it more visible. We will do some testing in the World Cup finals in September, maybe using heart rate measures to see if we can really see when the archer is under pressure, but cost is a concern," said Dielen.

On talking why court B is a disadvantage, Dielen said: "There are pluses and minuses of the two fields. The minus definitely is for the archers who have only competed in court B. We feel that they may feel like a second-class archer."

"That's something we're not happy with. I think everyone should have the feeling of shooting in front of a big crowd and with a video board, so that's definitely a minus. On the plus side, contrary to Athens, when we had four targets, only two targets were televised. That everyone, if they want to, can have television with televised pictures of the archers," added he.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2008)