Rio Olympics: Silver lining for India as archer Bombayla Devi moves into pre-quarters

Rio de Janeiro: Archer Laishram Bombayla Devi gave Indian fans something to cheer about as she shot clean and fair and cruised into the pre-quarterfinals of the women’s individual recurve archery competition at Sambodromo here on Wednesday. Competing in her third straight Olympics, Bombayla Devi, who had lost in the second round at the London Olympics, first defeated Laurence Baldauff of Austria 6-2 and then took out Chinese Taipei’s Lin Shih-Chia by the same score-line to provide some silver lining to India’s Day 5 campaign. The 31-year-old from Manipur, who finished 24th in the ranking round, outclassed Lin 27-24, 27-24, 26-27, 28-26 to reach the pre-quarterfinals. Up against Lin, who won women’s team bronze medal, Bombayla started with a 10 and then hit 8 and 9 to total 27 as against 24 (8, 7, 9) of her opponent. The Indian scored 8, 9, 10 against Lin's hat-trick of 8s to clinch the second set. In the third set, the Chinese Taipei girl hit the bull's eye twice even as Bombayla came up with a 7 and 9 in the first two shots. In the final shot, the Indian hit a 10 but that was not enough to win the set. The fourth set saw Bombayla producing a perfect score of 10 and then hit 9 twice against Lin's 7, 9, 10 to seal the issue in her favour. Earlier, Bombayla showed tremendous nerves as she bounced back after losing the first set to outclass Laurence in the second, third and fourth set in the first round.