BackRio Olympics: Archer Bambayla Devi on target, shooter Jitu Rai misses
India's earnest wait for first medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics continues, archer Laishram Bambayla Dev holds out hope
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Rio de Janeiro: India’s earnest wait for the country’s first medal after four fruitless days continued on Day 5 in the Olympic Games with strong pistol shooting hope Jitu Rai crashing out of his pet 50m event without making the final.
Rai, winner of the gold medal in the same event in both the Commonwealth and Asian Games two years ago, showed rare signs of nerves going into the sixth and final series of ten shots in the qualification round and was way off the mark to end up overall 12th with a total of 554 out of 600.
The 28-year-old Nepal-born army shooter, thus, would return empty-handed from the Rio range after finishing eighth in the 10m event earlier. Fellow pistol shooter Prakash Nanjappa performed even more dismally to finish 25th out of 41 shooters with 547.
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However, an encouraging result came from the archery range where Laishram Bambayla Devi stormed into the women’s individual pre-quarter finals with successive victories over Laurence Bauldaff of Austria and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Shih-Chi in the elimination phase. She will aim to make the last eight on Wednesday.
Multiple medallist at the ISSF World Cup, World Championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, Jitu started the 50m pistol qualification with 91 and fired 95 in the second series. Scores of 90 and 94 were followed by another 95, including four 10s, in the fifth series that propelled him to the fourth position at the completion of the series. However, the Army man botched things up completely in the final series that included two eights, which left him way behind in the pecking order.
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Not his usual self, a final effort of 10 was not enough for Jitu to avoid elimination in his maiden Olympics.
On the other hand, experienced archer Bombayla, hailing from Manipur, who finished 24th in the ranking round, dished out a dominating show to get the better off Lin 6-2 in the 1/16 elimination. Earlier in the 1/32 elimination round, the 31-year-old, in her third Olympics, had rallied her way to beat Austria’s Baldauff 6-2. Bombayla, who had lost in the second round of women’s individual recurve event at the London Olympics, outclassed Lin 27-24, 27-24, 26-27, 28-26 to reach the pre-quarterfinals.
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