Olympics: Deepika Kumari reaches women's individual archery quarterfinals; Bhajan Kaur eliminated
Paris (PTI): India's Deepika Kumari on Saturday qualified for the quarterfinals of the women's individual archery event after defeating Germany's Michelle Kroppen in the 1/8 elimination round but Bhajan Kaur crashed out following a loss to Indonesia's Diananda Choirunisa 6-5.
Deepika will be in action again later on Saturday.
The Indian defeated her German rival 6-4 in the elimination round after recording a score of 27-24 in the first set to garner two points. The two then shot 27-27 in the second set to share the points. Deepika won the third set 26-25 for two more points.
In the fourth set, the German took two points with a 29-27 win but Deepika was already ahead by two points heading into the final set.
In the fifth set, the rivals were tied at 27-all and split the points, but Deepika walked away with a 6-4 win to make it to the quarterfinals.
In the other contest, India's Bhajan fought well but her Indonesian opponent was far too good on the day.
Choirunisa was ahead by two points with a scoreline of 4-2 by the third set. After the Indonesian won the first set 29-28 for two points, Bhajan took two points in the next to make it 27-25.
However, in the third set Choirunisa bounced back to win 28-26. In the fourth, the Indian archer did well to take one point home with a scoreline of 28-28 and as did the Indonesian, taking the scoreline to 5-3.
In the fifth and final set, Bhajan did extremely well to earn two points with the scoreline drawn at 27-27, forcing the contest into shoot-off where she shot eight while her opponent shot nine.
Bhajan thus lost 5-6 to the Indonesian archer in the 1/8 Elimination round for the quarterfinals.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
