The Hindu : Sport / Olympic Games : Indian women stumble

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 11, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Olympic Games

Indian women stumble

Special Correspondent

BEIJING: The Indian women archers stumbled in the quarterfinals of the team event, losing 206-211 to eventual runner-up China at the Olympic Green archery field here on Sunday.

The team of Laishram Bombayla Devi, Dola Banerjee and Pranitha Vardhineni, could hit the bull’s eye only five times as compared to the nine 10s by China.

In the 24-arrow competition, in which each archer shoots two arrows by rotation, China led throughout, 52-51, 50-49, 56-51, except for the last round, 53-55, by when the match had literally been sealed.

India lost out owing to the below-par performance of Pranitha, who could score only 62 points out of 80 from her eight arrows. She did not have a 10 and had a 5 which pulled the team down.

Dola, the first to fire the arrows among the three, was a class act with a 73 that had three 10s.

Bombayla was equally good with a 71 that included two 10s.

It was a good draw and India, that had beaten China and a number of leading teams in the past, except the perennial champion Korea, thus missed a good opportunity to stay in the hunt for a medal.

Korea went onto annex the gold with a 224-215 victory over China in the final.

The repeated trials back home was perhaps not the right preparation for the team, and on hindsight it could be argued that the experience of Reena Kumari could have come in handy, as the 17-year-old Pranitha possibly cracked under pressure on the big stage.

The good score of Dola, who has been grappling poor form in recent times after having dominated the international scene earlier with gold medals in a World Cup and the World Cup Finals, and the sharpness of Bombayala, should augur well for the Indian team for the individual knock-out event scheduled for Tuesday.

In the men’s individual event, the lone Indian entry, Mangal Singh Champia, who had finished in the second place in the ranking round, would seek to assert his class on Wednesday.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport