Three athletes, along with three officials, left Dhaka on Friday at 6:00pm to participate in the Tokyo Olympics.
The athletes are archer Ruman Shana and Diya Siddique and shooter Abdullah Hel Baki. General secretary of Bangladesh Archery Federation Kazi Razib Uddin Ahmed is going with the archery team as the team leader and Martin Frederick as the coach of the archers.
Ruman and Diya, who returned with silver from the mixed recurve event of the archery World Cup, will participate in the men's individual ranking round and women's individual ranking round, scheduled to take place at Yumenos Himapark Archery field on July 23.
Today (yesterday) afternoon, we are going to leave for Tokyo to play in the Olympics. Everybody, please pray for us," Ruman wrote on his Facebook profile.
"Yes, they have left (for Japan) on scheduled time today (Friday)," BOA secretary general Syed Shahed Reza told The Business Post.
Baki, who is going into his second Olympics after Rio 2016, where he became 25th in the 10-meter air rifle, will also compete in the same event. He will compete at the Asaka shooting range on July 25.
Golam Shafiuddin Khan, Baki's instructor, will be accompanying him throughout the event.
Diya qualified for the Tokyo Olympics courtesy of a wild card handed to Bangladesh. Before being handed the wildcard, Diya had been trying to earn a direct qualification but failed to beat Slovakian archer Ana Umer in stage three of World Archery.
Ruman became the first Bangladeshi archer to directly qualify for the Olympics after he won the bronze medal in the World Archery Championship in the Netherlands in 2019.
Apart from them, three other athletes will also compete for Bangladesh in the Tokyo Olympics, taking the count to six athletes across four sports. Swimmers Ariful Islam, Junaina Ahmed, and runner Jahir Rayhan will also join fly for Tokyo in the coming days.
Ariful will leave for Tokyo from Paris on July 17, whereas Junaina will fly from London on July 25. Jahir is also scheduled to leave for Tokyo on July 25.
The 32nd edition of the Olympics will run from July 23 to August 8, 2021, after the event had to be postponed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 339 events of 33 different sports will be held across 41 different venues in and outside Tokyo during the games.
