AGENCY
Rio de Janeiro: Atanu Das let 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 while rifle shooters Gagan Narang and Chain Singh got eliminated in the 50m prone event on yet another dismal day for India in the Rio Olympics.
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.
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.
Das seemed to lose his nerve on a couple of occasions and missed out on capitalising on positions of strength against the world No.8 Korean who shot a hat-trick of perfect 10s in the opening set.
Atanu responded quite well with three successive 10s of his own to unnerve Lee and draw level in the match by taking the second set.
The third set ended up being a tie before Lee nosed ahead by grabbing the fourth set.
In the decisive fifth set, Atanu and Lee were tied 19-19 after the first two shots. Lee managed a 9 off his final arrow and Atanu needed to go one better to take the match into a shoot-off.
But Atanu could only strike a 9, which was enough to tie the fifth set 28-28 but insufficient to save the match. 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. .
