AGENCY
Rio de Janeiro: India continued its flop show on Day 7 of the Olympic Games with Atanu Das bringing down the curtains in archery, rifle shooters Gagan Narang and Chain Singh coming a cropper and shuttlers Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa making a tame exit.
To add to the woes, the country’s athletes made a disastrous beginning in track and field events with star discus thrower Vikas Gowda buckling under pressure once again to finish a distant 28th with a poor best throw of 58.99 metres and was eliminated. A similar dismal story was repeated by woman shot putter Manpreet Kaur who came up with a best effort of 17.06 metres that fetched her the 23rd position overall. She too made an inglorious exit from the Games.
Half miler Jinson Johnson also bowed out by finishing fifth in first round heat 3 clocking 1 minute, 47.27. Overall his time gave him the 25th place out of 57 starters and was better than some of the other qualifiers who progressed automatically as they finished in the top three of their respective heats.
The day commenced with Atanu Das letting slip chances in his men’s individual recurve pre-quarterfinal to bow out of contention and draw curtains on India’s fruitless campaign in archery. Shooting amid heavy rain, Atanu went down 4-6 to World No.8 Lee Seung-Yun, who had already helped South Korea win the team gold at the event, by losing two sets and winning one while the rest two ended in ties. The Indian lost 28-30, 30-28, 27-27, 27-28 28-28 to bring to an end the country’s medal-less campaign.
“Every match (competition) has its own pressure. Olympics obviously is the highest level. You have more pressure here. This was my first Olympics. I tried my best but could not succeed. Hope to do better the next time,” the Das told PTI after his exit from competition.
Women archers Laishram Bombayla Devi, Deepika Kumari and Laxmirani Majhi have already bowed out of contention after losing in both the women’s team and individual events. The script was no different in another precision sport, shooting, where seasoned Narang and Chain Singh flopped in the prone position of the 50m rifle event. While Narang, who won the London Games bronze in 10m Air Rifle, signed off 13th with a total score of 623.1, Singh was way down at 36th with a score of 619.6 in the qualification round.
