Rio Olympics: Women archers raise Indian hopes, enter pre-quarters

Rio de Janeiro: Former world No. 1 Deepika Kumari and seasoned campaigner Laishram Bombayla Devi,  lifted some gloom from the Indian camp as they gave clinical performances to cruise into the pre-quarterfinals of the women’s individual recurve archery competition at Sambodromo here on Wednesday. Competing in her third straight Olympics, Bombayla 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 Bombayla, who had lost in the second round at the London Olympics, 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. Then, Deepika defeated Georgia's Kristine Esebua 6-4 in the women's individual 1/64 elimination round. Playing under floodlights and light showers, Deepika fired eight 10s in 15 arrows, and looked in fine touch. In the 1/32 elimination round, Deepika was off to a tentative start against Italy’s Guendalina Sartori, firing a seven and an eight before ending with a nine to give away the first set 24-27. She made quick amends though, firing two 10s in the following set to level the scores at 2-2. After blitzing to a 28-26 win in the third set, two 10s in the final series was all she needed to sail into the pre-quarters. Deepika, making her second Olympic appearance, had finished in the 20th position with 640 points in the ranking round. At the London Games, she lost in the opening round of the individual event. 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. Bombayla, who was the best Indian performer in the women's team event, scored a 24-27, 28-24, 27-23, 26-24 win in the 1/32 elimination round. The 41-year-old Laurence started well with a hat-trick of 9s in the first set to get the better of the Bombayla, who started off with a 9 but then shot 7 consecutively. However, Bombayla hit the bull’s-eye to start the second set on a dominating note and then produced consecutive 9s to bounce back into the contest. She produced a hat-trick of 9s in the third set to lead 4-2, before sealing the contest with a series of 9, 9, 8 in the fourth set. In the individual elimination round, each archer shoots three arrows in a set. The archer with the maximum score at the end of six arrows is awarded two points. In the instance of scores being tied, the points are split. The first archer to reach six points wins the match.