The Hindu : Sport / Archery : Prabhat proves a point before losing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 24, 2004

Sport

Sport - Archery

Prabhat proves a point before losing

KOLKATA, JULY 23. The Indian challenge came to a predictable end in the individual Olympic round competition of the eighth World junior archery championship at Lilleshall (England) on Thursday. Only three out of the eight reached the round of 16 before bowing out.

The luck of the draw was such that India's three best archers found themselves in the top quarter from where top seed Timothy Cuddihy of Australia was expected to qualify. Cuddihy accounted for Rahul Banerjee in the pre-quarterfinals with a 169-165 scoreline.

The 16th-seeded Banerjee had beaten Andrea Grandi of Italy 164-154 in the first round and Russia's Alexey Nikolaev 166-146. Despite coming up with another solid round of 160-plus, Banerjee found himself on the losing side against the Aussie.

The ninth-ranked Nenavath Ravindhar scraped past Germany's Dennis Vennemann 164-163 but luck deserted the AP archer as he narrowly lost to Crispin Duenas of Canada 162-163.

The Canadian, who lost to Cuddihy in the quarterfinals, packed off Talukdar in the round of 16 with a 163-157 verdict. The Guwahati-born Talukdar, seeded eighth, registered two wins against Jacek Kwaczynski of Poland (164-143) and Ukraine's Oleksandr Percov (164-156).

The fourth Indian entry — Prabhat Kandir — proved to be the surprise package. The 42nd-ranked Prabhat eliminated higher ranked archers before losing to giant-killer Kim Seung Wun of Korea 154-165. Prabhat ousted the 23rd-ranked Japanese Haruhiko Kitada 158-153 in the first round and defeated 10th seed Tang Koi of China in the next round 162-157.

There was nothing much to shout about on the distaff side. After beating country mate Ranu 153-150 in the first round, the 19th-ranked Laxmirani Majhi lost to Jo Hye Young of Korea 151-155. Runu Swargiary lost to Sweden's Anna Alnefelt 148-152 in the first round while Sushama got past Izabela Skopeki of Poland 151-142 but fell to the seventh seed, Charlotte Burgess of Great Britain, 149-157. — Our Special Correspondent

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