Indian archers out of medal contention

Representational picture

Indian archers drew a blank in the individual and team events of both recurve and compound sections as they failed to enter the medal rounds of the ongoing World Cup Stage II, here Thursday. The Indian men's recurve team of Jagdish Choudhary, Chaman Singh and Sukhchain Singh lost to their lower-ranked counterparts from Bangladesh 1-5. They started off with a 54-all opening, only to misfire in the second and third sets to lose the quarterfinal tie.

The compound women's team of Parveena, Monali Jadhav and Priya Gurjar too witnessed similar fate as they lost 219-231 against their opponents from Chinese Taipei. The recurve women's team also fell by the wayside in the second round with a 2-6 defeat to USA. Seeded fourth, the compound men's team could not even cross the first round hurdle and were eliminated by 13th seed New Zealand 220-223.

India's hope will now rest on the mixed pair event in both the recurve and compound sections. Earlier, the Indians started on a miserable note in the individual section as they bowed out one by one. Vakilraj Dindor made a pre-quarterfinal exit, going down to Wei Chun-Heng of Chinese Taipei 3-7 in the men's recurve. Ankita Bhakat lost to seventh seed Meng Fanxu of China in a pre-quarterfinal contest that went all the way up to shoot-off. Locked 5-5 after five sets, Meng shot a perfect 10 in the shoot-off to edge out Ankita.

Preeti then lost to Naomi Folkard of Great Britain 4-6 in the third round. In the men's compound individual event, Gurwinder Singh also made a third round exit after losing to 51-year-old Danie Oosthuizen of Australia 146-149, while Monali Jadhav was ousted by Alexis Ruiz of USA 140-144 in the women's section. India fielded their reserves in the World Cup Stage II and were further handicapped by the absence of any coach in the compound section due to internal wrangling in the Archery Association of India. After the travel issues that prevented India's top archers from attending the season-opener World Cup in Medellin, India stuck to their original plan of sending the reserves for Shanghai.

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