Deepika shows brilliance but archery team fared poorly.

Men’s Archery Team and Individual:

Men’s team began very well in first round (6 arrows each for three individuals in a team) by sharing 4th spot with Korea. But then everything drifted away. All three of them find their going tough. Especially Talukdar had a very bad day and it effected the team rankings. India soon dropped to 11th and the last position at the end of the first half.

Second half saw no improvements in team wise but Tarundeep Rai put-up a lot better performance. He was ranked 47th at the first half with score of 328 from 36 arrows but managed to finish at 31st in the end. Despite his performance, Indian team saw no improvements in rankings and ended at 12th itself with the score of 1969. Indian team had just 71 10s (perfect hits) with Tarundeep Rai himself accounting for 29 in those 71.

Fixtures:

Team event (Today 2pm IST): Japan vs India

A tough task ahead. A very difficult match because Japan is expected to finish in top 4 actually. With our current form, i don’t see us past Japan. The winner of this match will face United States in quarter-finals.

Men’s individual matches are scheduled later but draw is really tough. Its hard to see anyone making into quarter-finals.

Women’s Archery Team and Individual:

In contrast to men’s, women’s began really very bad. Their first combined 50 arrows took them only to 9th position with Swuro clearly struggling. The next 50 is really very good with Swuro coming back strong and India went a position ahead. But at the second half we made no improvements instead the performance of both Bombayla and Swuro both declined. Indian team finished at 9th with the  score of 1938 points from their 216 arrows.

Individually Deepika as expected stood ahead of other two Indian contingents. Deepika initially struggled but came back awesomely in second half to finish at 8th. Deepika made 2nd high score overall in her last 36 arrows. She hit 25 10s and finished just 9 score behind the leader Korean Kl Bo Bae. Unlike men’s archery where Koreans took huge lead in both individual and team, women’s are very close together in the points showing how tough the competition will be.

Fixtures:

Team Event (tomorrow): India vs Denmark

India should win this despite faring poorer than Denmark in ranking qualification. As i said during preview, Swuro needs to help her team mates by getting good score. But in quarter-final, we will meet tournament favourites Koreans. A very tough match and India need to put their best step for good result. Again a tough draw for Indian archers in women’s individual matches.

A poor day written the archery team fate very badly. A unlucky draw just made even a medal very tough from archery.

Tags: Bombayla, Day 1 of London Olympics 2012, Deepika Kumari, India at London Olympics 2012, India's medal chances at Olympics 2012, Indian archery team, Jayanta Talukdar, London Olympics, Rahul Banerjee, Swuro, Tarundeep Rai