Rio Olympics 2016: Das outshines female archers to end up fifth in ranking round

Deepika Kumari once again faltered under pressure to miss a target as India's medal hope in the women's team event received a big blow by finishing a lowly seventh in the archery qualification round of the Olympic Games here today. Hours after Atanu Das impressed on his Olympic debut by finishing a creditable fifth in the individual section, India's star archer Deepika put up one of her most inconsistent displays to finish a poor 20th with a score of 640 out of 720.

In her third Olympics, senior archer Bombayla DeviLaishram shot 638 to finish 24th while Laxmirani Majhi finished a lowly 43rd with 614 points. Eyeing their eighth gold from as many editions, Koreans lived up to their reputation with Choi Misun, Chang Hye Jinand Ki Bo Bae making it top three. However, Indian archery campaign got off to a rousingstart with a brilliant show in the morning session by Atanu Das in his maiden Olympics appearance.

Das showed fine composure and skill to bounce back from apoor start to finish fifth in the qualification round asarchery got underway at Brazil's historic Samba street here. Lying a lowly 10th after first 36 arrows, the 24-year-oldKolkata lad turned it around in style in the final set of 36arrows by shooting 23 perfect 10s including 10 closest to thecentre to finish fifth with 683 out of the possible 720.

Das is the lone male member in the Indian archery team and compete only in the individual section as the men's team had failed to qualify from the World Championship. Leading the qualification round was two-time Worldchampion Kim Woo-jin who shot 700, for a world record on theopening day of the XXXI Olympiad. Das had troubled Woo-jin in the World Cup Stage 3 in Antalya earlier in June where he led the Korean heavyweight 4-0 before losing 5-6 for the individual bronze medal.

But his impressive finish meant that Das, who will begin his elimination round against lowly 60th ranked Jitbahadur Muktan of Nepal, will avoid the topseed Woo-jin till the semifinals in the 64-member draw. But the three women archers' wayward performance will affect their medal prospects in the team event where they got a ranking of seventh and open their campaign against Colombiawho were ranked 10th.

If they manage to advance, India may face second rankedRussia and third ranked China in their prospective quartersand semifinal clashes. The double Commonwealth Games gold medalist, Deepika, ledby one point after 30 arrows only to slip in the sixth endwhen she shot a poor 49 with scores of 9,9,8,8,8,7. The worst happened in the last arrow of the seventh endwhen she drew a blank by completely missing the target. Deepika raised her game from the next five ends by securing 13 perfect 10s from 30 arrows but it could only raiseher ranking up to 20.